Composition - Crank and Chain
About this artwork
During the early 1930s, Wadsworth painted in an abstract style, but moved away from the hard, aggressive forms of his earlier vorticist period to naturalistically-inspired shapes. The rounded forms in this painting seem biological in inspiration. For many modern artists, scientific discoveries of a microscopic, biological nature were as stimulating and as suggestive of modernity as new developments in machinery or industry. Wadsworth was in close contact with developments in the French avant-garde, travelling to France regularly and exhibiting there. On the Continent he was recognised, in the early 1930s, as probably Britain's leading abstract artist.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Edward Wadsworth (1889 - 1949) English
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title:Composition - Crank and Chain
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date created:1932
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materials:Tempera on board
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measurements:35.70 x 40.70 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Presented by Mr and Mrs J.H. Macdonell 1960
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accession number:GMA 768
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gallery:
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glossary:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Edward Wadsworth
Edward Wadsworth
Wadsworth was born in Yorkshire. After a brief period spent studying engineering in Munich, he attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1909 to 1912. Wadsworth was one of the original members of Wyndham Lewis's vorticist movement and one of the first British artists to adopt a machine-...