Helen Saunders (1885-1963) was at the heart of avant-garde art in London in the turbulent years before and during the First World War. She was deeply inspired by Roger Fry’s two Post-Impressionist exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and began working and exhibiting within the circle of the Bloomsbury Group. However, Saunders soon became a close friend and ally of Wyndham Lewis and was an important member of his Vorticist Group of artists and writers, which broke away from Fry’s set and included Ezra Pound, Gaudier Brzeska, Edward Wadsworth and William Roberts as part of their number. Although short-lived, Vorticism remains one of the most assertive and fully engaged Modernist movements formed in this country. Between 1912 and 1915, Saunders produced geometrically stylised and abstract works that count among the most radical and experimental made anywhere in Europe at that time. In 1914 she contributed to the Vorticists’ now-famous manifesto publication ‘Blast’ and exhibited at their inaugural exhibition at the Doré Gallery in London in 1915. She was also included in the Vorticist exhibition organised by Pound and John Quinn at the Penguin Club in New York in 1917. Saunders’ avant-garde years were important but soon overlooked as she fell into relative obscurity after the War. With the revival of interest in Vorticism during the 1970s, Saunders emerged as a figure of interest to scholars and curators but was still overshadowed by her male contemporaries, especially Lewis. It is only in more recent years that her work has started to be fully reassessed and recognised as being a vital contribution to Modernist art at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Saunders’ Vorticist period work is extremely rare. It is assumed that a significant proportion of her output during these years has not survived. What remains is a small number of very striking works on paper in ink, watercolour and bodycolour. Several seem to be finished works in their own right and some she exhibited between 1915 and 1917.

with the artist until her death in 1963; bequeathed to her sister, Ethel Saunders; bequeathed to her first cousin once removed, Helen Peppin, 1971; given to her daughter, Brigid Peppin, 1989; offered by her as a gift and part-purchase to the Samuel Courtauld Trust, 2016

Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 09/01/1996-03/03/1996; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 16/03/1996-20/04/1996

Peppin, Brigid, and Cork, Richard, Helen Saunders (1885-1963), exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Graves Art Gallery ,Sheffield, 1996
p.15
ill. on p.15

Watermark: Watermark: none.

Inscription: none.

Collector's mark: none.