26 March – 21 September 2025 Charleston in Lewes
Charleston presents a landmark exhibition of works by modernist pioneer Vanessa Bell. A World of Form and Colour is a significant exhibition of Bell’s works, exploring the artist’s legacy through a display of over 100 works and featuring several pieces which have never previously been exhibited.
Previously on show at MK Gallery, the exhibition has been reimagined for its tour to Charleston, which marks a homecoming to the Sussex landscape and Vanessa Bell’s adoptive home. Appreciating Bell’s innovative position in British modernism, A World of Form and Colour highlights her exploration of abstraction and new ways of mark-making, as well as her pioneering role in design – Bell was co-director and lead designer at the Omega Workshops, producing textile designs, painted furniture and interiors.
Among a number of new loans to Charleston from private collections are door panels painted by Bell while holidaying in West Wittering, Sussex in 1915, as well as the painted door of her attic studio at Charleston, both of which are exhibited for the first time in this exhibition. Other previously unseen works include the oil painting The Pool of London (1933), a rare painting of London.
Other works new to this exhibition at Charleston include a comprehensive display of Vanessa Bell’s book covers designed for her sister, Virginia Woolf; the painting The Garden Room, commissioned by the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain in 1950; as well as The Party (1920), shown at Sotheby’s in London in December 2024.
The exhibition examines some of the key places where Bell lived and worked – including her studios at 46 Gordon Square and 8 Fitzroy Street in London, and Charleston and Asheham in East Sussex, as well as the inspiration taken from her travels to France and Italy – but also the people, from life models to paintings of her family, around whom she built rich narratives and unspoken dialogues in her work.
Extracts of Vanessa Bell’s letters, read by Gemma Arterton, will bring the artist’s voice to life, accompanying key themes of the exhibition via Charleston’s Bloomberg Connects digital guide.
This exhibition will be displayed alongside the first institutional exhibition in the UK by the American artist Koak, which features a newly commissioned body of work.
Darren Clarke, Head of Collections, Research and Exhibitions, says: “It is such an exciting thing, to be able to bring so many of Vanessa Bell’s extraordinary and beautiful works to Lewes, the town she knew so well. The exhibition and its location really help to shine new light on Bell’s life, on her art and design practice and prove, if proof were needed, what an important and influential figure she is in British modern art.”
The exhibition is organised by Charleston in partnership with MK Gallery. Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour was on view at MK Gallery from 19 October 2024 – 23 February 2025.
Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on display at Charleston in Lewes, Charleston’s cultural centre in the heart of Lewes which opened in 2023 and which is a short distance from the house, gardens and galleries of Charleston in Firle. Both spaces
