British Prints and Futurism at the Met

Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939
September 23 – December 7, 2008
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Samantha Rippner, Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints
Catalog

Rhythms of Modern Life will be the first major exhibition in the United States to examine the impact of Futurism and Cubism on British modernist printmaking from the beginning of World War I to the beginning of World War II. Featuring the work of 14 artists, it will showcase selective works inspired by Vorticism, the first radically modern, inherently abstract British art movement of the 20th century. The principal artists represented are the prominent early followers of Futurism and Vorticism and the later color linocut artists of the esteemed Grosvenor School of Art in London. The exhibition will feature prime examples of graphic work that celebrate the vitality and dynamism of modern life, from Edward Wadsworth’s hard-edged, industrial-inspired woodcuts to C. R. W. Nevinson’s Futurist etchings of the first mechanized war to Cyril Power’s vibrantly colored linocuts of London’s modern tube stations.

Prior to its showing at the Metropolitan, the exhibition was on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Afterward, it will travel to The Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami.