Wyndham Lewis Portraits

Described by Walter Sickert as 'the greatest portraitist of this or any other time', Wyndham Lewis was one of the European avant-garde’s truly dynamic forces. Invited to design a promotional campaign and catalogue for the exhibition ‘Wyndham Lewis Portraits’, we looked toward the opening salvo of the Vorticist movement, 'Blast', a publication edited and designed by Lewis. The campaign features a portrait by Lewis of his friend and champion TS Eliot, with bold, distressed wood type, and vertical and horizontal rules in homage to 'Blast'. This palette was applied across a range of promotional collateral including flyers, invites, press folders, ads and a four-sheet poster. The catalogue features bold, uppercase ‘wood’ type, rules, punctuation and layout – evoking the striking visual aesthetic of 'Blast', while the colour palette echoes the hues found in the portraits themselves.