The Wick List

Viewing Vanessa Bell at Charleston Lewes

The Wick Culture - André Derain, Portrait of Bartolomeo Savona, 1906,. Image courtesy of The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham.

Above André Derain, Portrait of Bartolomeo Savona, 1906,. Image courtesy of The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham.

The Wick Culture - Abstract Painting, c.1914. Image courtesy of the artist and Charleston Lewes

Above Abstract Painting, c.1914. Image courtesy of the artist and Charleston Lewes

The Wick Culture - Street Corner Conversation, private collection. Image photograph courtesy of Colin Mills

Above Street Corner Conversation, private collection. Image photograph courtesy of Colin Mills

Above André Derain, Portrait of Bartolomeo Savona, 1906,. Image courtesy of The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham.

Above Abstract Painting, c.1914. Image courtesy of the artist and Charleston Lewes

Above Street Corner Conversation, private collection. Image photograph courtesy of Colin Mills

Vanessa Bell: A World of Colour and Form

Charleston Lewes
26 March–21 September 2025

Vanessa Bell needs little introduction. The British artist and elder sister of Virgina Woolf shaped the course of art history in the 20th century, a radical pioneer of modernist painting and design, and key figure of the storied Bloomsbury Group.

Bell died at Charleston, and is buried in the Firle Parish Churchyard, and so this landmark exhibition at Charleston Lewes is something of a homecoming. A World of Colour and Form traces Bell’s revolutionary ideas and art through more than 100 works, not only her intoxicating painting, but furniture designs, ceramics, book covers and textiles, too. For Bell, art provided a refuge: “the one dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos” – words that resonate deeply today.

This legacy is traced into the present, bringing them into dialogue with a concurrent exhibition of the American artist Koak. Koak presents new works inspired by and responding to Bell, with emotive colour and sensual lines evoking the complexities of the human condition.