AKA contemporary

The British born artist, originally named Marjorie Watson Williams, started off her artistic career studying at the Slade London as a figurative artist.

In 1926 she moved to Paris, changing her name to Paule Vézelay in order to identify herself with the art School of Paris and to escape the stigmatisation that came with being a female artist in the early 20th century. Here her art developed greatly, she created many loved surrealist works alongside André Masson. 

Vézelay became very well respected among the brilliant minds of the Parisian art scene at the time. Elected in 1934 to join the Abstraction - Creation movement and befriending Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp in doing so. Her continuous innovation led her to success in her exploration of pure abstraction, exhibiting in 1938 in Milan alongside Hans Arp and Kandinsky. 

After the outbreak of WWII, Vézelay was forced to move back to London and struggled to establish herself quite as well as in France. However when Andre Bloc requested she set up a London branch of the Groupe Espace movement in 1953 she managed to gather an exciting group of individuals to produce works despite the difficulty of the British artistic climate not yet having moved as completely into abstraction. The Groupe Espace movement were largely concerned with geometric abstraction, likening their ideals to the earlier De Stijl and Bauhaus movements.