Vanessa Bell

At the heart of the influential Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa Bell was one of the most radical artists working in Britain in the first decades of the twentieth century   For the first time, this book locates Vanessa Bell “centre frame,” focusing on her importance as a painter, designer, and decorator. She was one of the first British artists to produce fully resolved abstract paintings, and she was a driving force behind the Omega Workshops, of which she was a cofounder and director. Her work was often collaborative and anonymous.   Bell provided a role model for her younger sister, Virginia Woolf, in her determination to operate professionally on equal footing with the best male artists of her generation. New research and previously unpublished correspondence establish how she deployed her skills as a networker, hostess, and administrator, operating “beneath the radar” through her brother and fellow artists Roger Fry and Duncan Grant. The book outlines the specific prejudices and obstacles that Bell encountered as a professional woman in the first decades of the twentieth century. Her self-deprecating tactics, championing the work of the men in her circle and even allowing them to take credit for her own creative practice while providing the invisible labour of a housekeeper, caregiver, and muse, will resonate for feminists today.