Charleston presents a landmark exhibition of works by modernist pioneer Vanessa Bell, with a display of over 100 works.
Step into the world of Vanessa Bell, a groundbreaking artist and key figure in 20th-century British art, whose creativity spanned multiple disciplines. This landmark exhibition the biggest ever dedicated to Bell brings her practice into focus, affirming her as a radical pioneer of modernism in her own right. With over 100 works on display, featuring several pieces which have never previously been exhibited, explore the full breadth of Bell’s artistic legacy.
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.
Among several 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 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 – and the people, from life models to paintings of her family, around whom she built rich narratives and unspoken dialogues in her work.
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.
Image: Vanessa Bell, Street Corner Conversation,1913, private collection. Photograph © Colin Mills; Vanessa Bell, The Coffee Pot,1917, private Collection © Estate of Vanessa Bell. Vanessa Bell, David Garnett, oil and gouache on cardboard, 1915 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Exhibition details
26 March–21 September 2025
Charleston in Lewes, BN7 1FB
Wednesday–Sunday/Bank Holiday Monday: 10am–5pm
Tickets: £14 | Free for supporters | Concessions available - BOOK HERE
Further Information: Charleston