Paule Vézelay: Living Lines at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

Paule Vézelay: Living Lines is a long-overdue recognition of one of Britain's pioneering abstract artists.

25 January - 27 April 2025

Vézelay, born in Bristol in 1892 as Marjorie Watson-Williams, played a crucial role in the European avant-garde but has remained underappreciated compared to her contemporaries. Living Lines, curated by Simon Grant, is the first major retrospective of her work in over 40 years, showcasing more than sixty pieces spanning her seven-decade career, including paintings, prints, sculptures, textiles, and archival documents that have never been publicly exhibited before.

Read more

The exhibition highlights Vézelay’s early experiments with abstraction in the 1920s, predating British modernists such as Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. Her involvement in the Abstraction-Création movement in Paris, where she worked alongside artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Arp, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, is also explored. Her work is characterised by dynamic biomorphic forms, a theme that flourished after her break with surrealist André Masson.

Grant emphasises Vézelay’s experimental nature and the challenges she faced, including sexism and the disruption of her career by World War II. The exhibition aims to correct this historical oversight and solidify her place in British and European modernism.

With a range of works from both public and private collections, Living Lines offers a fresh perspective on Vézelay’s artistic legacy. Running until 27^th of April, it provides a compelling opportunity to discover this overlooked master of abstraction.
Highlights from Paule Vézelay: Living Lines
Construction. Grey Lines on Pink Ground (1938), by Paule Vézelay at the RWA. Taken by Hidden Gallery.

Vézelay and Alexander Calder

In the first room of the exhibition, an Alexander Calder mobile is unexpectedly suspended from the ceiling, conversing with Vézelay’s painting “Construction. Grey Lines on Pink Ground” (1938) which hangs beneath it. The Calder sculpture is poised, with a linear composition that resonates with the shapes and forms in Vézelay’s painting. The pairing creates an interesting dialogue between the artists’ explorations of movement and abstraction in painting and sculpture.
Correspondence with Matisse, Miró and Giacometti

The exhibition also includes letters from renowned members of the Parisian coterie, including Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, the Kandinskys, Ernest Hemmingway and Alberto Giacometti. Presented alongside photographs, the archive reflects the esteem in which Vézelay was held by major figures of European modernism and provide a rare glimpse into the artistic exchanges of the period.
Feeling inspired? Browse our collection of modernist masterpieces below