36 Facts About Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was a British writer, painter and critic.

Wyndham Lewis was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST, the literary magazine of the Vorticists.

Wyndham Lewis's novels include Tarr and The Human Age trilogy, composed of The Childermass, Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta.

Wyndham Lewis wrote two autobiographical volumes: Blasting and Bombardiering and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date.

Wyndham Lewis was educated in England at Rugby School and then, from 16, the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, but left for Paris without finishing his course.

Wyndham Lewis spent most of the 1900s travelling around Europe and studying art in Paris.

In 1908, Wyndham Lewis moved to London, where he would reside for much of his life.

Wyndham Lewis was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, which brought him into close contact with the Bloomsbury Group, particularly Roger Fry and Clive Bell, with whom he soon fell out.

In 1912, Wyndham Lewis exhibited his work at the second Postimpressionist exhibition: Cubo-Futurist illustrations to Timon of Athens and three major oil paintings.

From 1913 to 1915, Wyndham Lewis developed the style of geometric abstraction for which he is best known today, which his friend Ezra Pound dubbed "Vorticism".

Wyndham Lewis sought to combine the strong structure of Cubism, which he found was not "alive", with the liveliness of Futurist art, which lacked structure.

Wyndham Lewis had a brief tenure at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops, but left after a quarrel with Fry over a commission to provide wall decorations for the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, which Wyndham Lewis believed Fry had misappropriated.

In BLAST, Wyndham Lewis formally expounded the Vorticist aesthetic in a manifesto, distinguishing it from other avant-garde practices.

Wyndham Lewis wrote and published a play, Enemy of the Stars.

In 1915, the Vorticists held their only UK exhibition before the movement broke up, largely as a result of World War I Lewis himself was posted to the western front and served as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.

Wyndham Lewis made vivid accounts of narrow misses and deadly artillery duels.

Wyndham Lewis exhibited his war drawings and some other paintings of the war in an exhibition, "Guns", in 1918.

Wyndham Lewis later documented his experiences and opinions of this period of his life in the autobiographical Blasting and Bombardiering, which covered his life up to 1926.

Wyndham Lewis launched his second magazine, The Tyro, of which there were only two issues.

Wyndham Lewis launched yet another magazine, The Enemy, largely written by himself and declaring its belligerent critical stance in its title.

Wyndham Lewis believed that their work failed to show sufficient critical awareness of those ideologies that worked against truly revolutionary change in the West, and therefore became a vehicle for these pernicious ideologies.

Wyndham Lewis attacked the process philosophy of Bergson, Samuel Alexander, Alfred North Whitehead, and others.

Wyndham Lewis produced a book of poems, One-Way Song, in 1933, and a revised version of Enemy of the Stars.

Wyndham Lewis was highly critical of the ideology of Surrealism, but admired the visual qualities of some Surrealist art.

Wyndham Lewis spent World War II in the United States and Canada.

Wyndham Lewis published several autobiographical and critical works: Rude Assignment, Rotting Hill, a collection of allegorical short stories about his life in "the capital of a dying empire"; The Writer and the Absolute, a book of essays on writers including George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Andre Malraux; and the semi-autobiographical novel Self Condemned.

From 1918 to 1921, Wyndham Lewis lived with Iris Barry, with whom he had two children.

Wyndham Lewis is said to have shown little affection for them.

In 1930, Wyndham Lewis married Gladys Anne Hoskins, 18 years his junior and affectionately known as Froanna.

Wyndham Lewis kept Froanna in the background, and many of his friends were unaware of her existence.

Wyndham Lewis was the model for some of Lewis's more tender and intimate portraits as well as a number of characters in his fiction.

Wyndham Lewis died in 1957 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.

In 1931, after a visit to Berlin, Wyndham Lewis published Hitler, a book presenting Adolf Hitler as a "man of peace" whose party-members were threatened by communist street violence.

Wyndham Lewis recognized the reality of Nazi treatment of Jews after a visit to Berlin in 1937.

Wyndham Lewis published The Hitler Cult, which firmly revoked his earlier support for Hitler.

For many years, Wyndham Lewis's novels have been criticised for their satirical and hostile portrayals of Jews.