‘An artist at the forefront of the avant-garde in Britain – from her involvement with the Rhythm group during the late 1910s, to vorticism, post-war figuration and the abstraction of the 1930s – Jessica Dismorr (1885 – 1939) has since, unjustly, fallen into obscurity. But at the Pallant in Chichester there is an exhibition of the work of her and her contemporaries who engaged with modernist literature and radical politics through their art, including their contributions to campaigns for women’s suffrage and the anti-fascist organisations of the 1930s.’ This is Abstract Composition 1915. Jessica Dismorr said that the painting was inspired by nights she spent wandering London with its ‘precincts of stately urban houses. Moonlight carves them in purity . . . They are the children of colossal restraint.’
18 November 2019
