Kettle’s Yard is currently home to the exhibition ‘New Rhythms’, which focuses on Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and presents a number of his drawings, sculptures, and paintings. In the peripheries of the gallery, some of Gaudier-Brzeska’s contemporaries are featured, showing works from Jacob Epstein, Percy Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, and Auguste Rodin, amongst others. One of the key elements of ‘New Rhythms’ is the insight that it gives us into the way culture was shifting in pre-war London; the dance scene was flourishing, particularly with the emergence of freer dance forms like the Tango, and there was an increasing fascination with wrestling.

The gallery at Kettle’s Yard is a shrine to Gaudier-Brzeska, displaying his notebooks, personal letters, and journals from the late nineteenth century up to his death in 1915. A friend of the sculptor and artist wrote that it was “hard to believe that a man so gifted with genius should come upon our earth merely to die by bullet." Part of Gaudier-Brzeska’s genius was his ability to find beauty in all things, even in the war on which he commented that having “been fighting for two months” he could “now gauge the intensity of life.”

Another of his gifts was the ability to identify the source of energetic movement in the everyday, and to convey this motion in his art. He articulated that “movement is the translation of life and if art depicts life, movement should come into art". He reinforced the former assertion by pointing out "we are only aware of life because it moves”. This is the central theme of the New Rhythms exhibit, and Gaudier Brzeska’s dedication to this idea is evident in the masterful execution of motion in his pieces.

The Gallery consists mainly of white painted walls (as you would expect), with a small intersection that is coloured in bold red and dark teal. The disparity between the two colour choices acts as a transitional phase between Gaudier-Brzeska’s pieces and that of his contemporaries, which entail significantly more colours in comparison. Featured on the coloured walls are futuristic drawings, along with depictions of bird landings and the effect of wind on certain materials, such as clothing or fabric; this provides a succession to the works of Rodin and Saunders.

As you enter the exhibit, three pictures appear on the left. These are an initial insight into the world of Gaudier-Brzeska, and his fascination with cubism. The three drawings are self-portraits that vary in line-thickness and tone, and do not comprise the expressive sense of movement found in his later works. Moving through the exhibit, sculptures placed between drawings bring the gallery into a strange static movement. It encourages you to move with it, and to observe the fine detail of each minute shift that accompanies even the slightest movement of the body.

Gaudier-Brzeska manages to produce such rhythmic forms through his beliefs about restraint, his use of materials, and the periods chosen for inspiration. In a letter to his wife, the sculptor wrote: “the connoisseur loves one spicy cake, but the glutton requires at least six to stimulate his pleasure.” Almost all the sculpted pieces focus on an individual or a pair, and never involve a group. This serves to highlight the beauty of the sculpted curves and the almost total abstraction of each figure. By involving more, the works would cease to effectively portray such transcending movement.

The works exhibited at Kettle’s Yard are sculpted mainly from plaster, stone or bronze. These materials were chosen by Gaudier-Brzeska because of his appreciation of the Renaissance and more specifically, Michelangelo. The way in which he shaped and moulded these materials provided the early twentieth century with a contemporary, progressive art form reflecting both modernity and the sudden acceleration of change in culture and society. Gaudier-Brzeska was predominantly fascinated with ballet and conveyed their dramatic stories into figurative casts. ‘L’apres midi d’un faune’, ‘Red Stone Dancer’, and ‘The Firebird’ are all shown in cross-hatched sketches and bronze sculptures.

One of the pieces that particularly stood out was  a sculpture by Jacob Epstein rendering a pregnant woman; he cast it in serpentine, giving it a glistening dark blue hue. This work is displayed level to Gaudier-Bzeska's Firebird piece, on the opposing wall of the gallery, highlighting the contrast between the two. Gaudier Brzeska's sculpture is inspired by the zenith of tension when the prince attempts to capture the Firebird. This pernicious desire to imprison directly contrasts with the geometric abstraction of a heavily pregnant woman which is representative of nurture and the liberating experience of bearing new life.

A theme that emerges in Gaudier-Brzeska’s works is an increasing fascination with African-Oceanic myth and discourse. This can be seen in a gradual move towards more radical geometric representation and darker, heavier materials. In another room a similar style appears in the work of Gaudier-Brzeska’s contemporaries, though each artist still remains distinctive. Wyndham Lewis’ ‘The Dancer’ creates continuity with the dark blue hues while Archipenko’s ‘The Dance’ sculpture invites questioning as to where the missing limbs are and whether the two figures are impassioned or fighting. It persistently entices the viewer to engage in a sort of non-prescribed, emotional movement of their own.

The final room is dedicated to the visualisation of boxers, wrestling and the tension between the two. The piece is strikingly garish in comparison to Gaudier-Brzeska’s other pieces and it is comparatively static. It was a commissioned piece and though his core style does shine through, the mural-esque piece to the left of it seems far more in keeping with Gaudier-Brzeska’s true artistic disposition.

The ending piece is that of a contemporary video, which sees a modern dancer moving erratically and beautifully to a violin piece. Only after a few minutes of being captivated by the shapes created by the dancer do you realise the figure is wrestling with the music. Whitley, Dzierzon and McCormick formulated this modern piece in response to Gaudier-Brzeska’s ‘Wrestler’s Relief’. The exhibition is testament to how profoundly moving Gaudier-Brzeska’s work was and still is to his audience, as it inspires us to create our own New Rhythms. 

New Rhythms is open until the 21st June

Admission is free