Paule Vézelay

Paule Vézelay is best known for her reliefs, but for an extraordinary year, between 1935 and 1936, she made a small series of striking white plaster sculptures. These sculptures form the starting point for this exhibition.

The reasons for this brief flowering are obscure, but among them must be the fact that around 1933 she met Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber, with whom she remained friends throughout their lives.

In 1994 the Centre for the Study of Sculpture acquired one of these sculptures, Dish and Little Boat, which was first shown at the Lefevre Galleries in 1936. The occasion of the exhibition arp: reliefs in the Henry Moore Institute seemed an appropriate moment at which to focus on Vézeley’s own work, and on the friendship she enjoyed with Arp.

This display includes of Vézelay’s sculptures, as well as drawings and painting from the 1930s, and personal tokens of her friendship with Arp: the poems, letters, private view cards, and photographs which they exchanged.

About the artist

Marjorie Watson-Williams (1892-1984) took the name Paule Vézelay in 1926, shortly after arriving in Paris. Although she chose the name because of her admiration for the church at Vézelay, the real reason for changing her name was the wish to integrate herself into the avant-garde of the contemporary Parisian Art World. For the next thirteen years, until the Second World War, Vézelay did this very successfully.

Since her retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1983, Paule Vézelay’s remarkable career has been the subject of renewed attention; Germaine Greer has been among the many converts to her cause.