»Living Lines«

She was in close contact with the greats of art and was a respected artist in Paris around 1930: Paule Vézelay (1892-1984) moved from London to Paris in 1926 and quickly gained a high reputation in the city's artistic circles with her abstract works. Her work has also been shown in international exhibitions, for example in Italy and the Netherlands. She was one of the first artists to use curved lines inspired by nature as a means of design – and thus helped to develop an alternative concept to Constructivism. At the beginning of the Second World War, she returned to England, where she was still unknown and was never able to build on her successes in Paris. Artistically, she remained true to her convictions until her death in 1984. A retrospective of her work only took place shortly before this. Towner Eastbourne Art Gallery is now showing Paule Vézelay: Living Lines, the first comprehensive exhibition on the artist in 40 years. The show runs from May 13 to August 31. The exhibition was previously on display from January to April 2025 in Bristol, the city where the artist was born.

The artist's oeuvre spans seven decades and various media such as painting, collage, sculpture, illustration, textile art and photography. Vézelay's real name was Marjorie Watson-Williams and she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, among others. She first made a name for herself with figurative paintings at an exhibition in London in 1921. After her arrival in Paris – where she chose her artist's name –, she abandoned this style in favor of abstraction. Her first abstract works from the late 1920s are now lost. Her best-known works include Object in Three Dimensions (1935) and Construction. Grey Lines on Pink Ground (1938), which belong to the Tate collection and are shown in this exhibition. There are also a number of artworks on display that have never been shown in public before.