Exhibitions

Marjorie Watson-Williams (1892-1984) took the name Paule Vezelay in 1926, shortly after arriving in Paris. Although she chose the name because of her admiration for the church at Vezeley, 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 13 years, until the Second World War, Vezelay did this very successfully.

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

Vezelay 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. The reasons for this brief flowering are obscure, but among them must be the fact that around 1933 she met 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, the '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 Vezeley's own work, and on the friendship she enjoyed with Arp. This display included all her sculptures, some drawings and painting from the 1930s, and personal tokens of their friendship: the poems, letters, private view cards, and photographs which they exchanged.