Rebel Art Centre
Rebel Art Centre (Cubist Centre)
Organization founded by Wyndham Lewis in April 1914 at 38 Great Ormond Street, London, after he had quarrelled with Roger Fry and broken with the Omega Workshops. The centre was intended to be a place in which artists and craftsmen could meet, work, and hold discussions, lectures, and classes. Lewis issued a prospectus in which he said the centre would be based on ‘principles underlying the movements in painting known as Cubist, Futurist and Expressionist’. Financial backing came from the painter Kate Lechmere (1887–1976). Other members included Dismorr, Frederick Etchells (1886–1973), better known for his subsequent career as an architect and translator of Le Corbusier, Nevinson, Helen Saunders (1885–1963), and Wadsworth. A group exhibition of Rebel Art Centre work was held at the Allied Artists' Association in June 1914; the centre closed the following month, but Vorticism grew out of it.
