Dior Men’s and Fendi Womenwear Artistic Director Kim Jones Curates a Bloomsbury Group Exhibition for Sotheby’s

by · WWD
British fashion designer Kim Jones.NIKOLAI VON BISMARCK

LONDON — Kim Jones is bringing his love of the Bloomsbury Group to Sotheby’s in London with an exhibition and a private sale.

“Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston” will run from Nov. 9 to 26 with a range of paintings, drawings, furniture, ceramics and literature from the likes of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf and Henry Lamb.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Charleston, the estate that takes care of Bell and Grant’s home and studio, which includes Charleston Lewes, a gallery space that’s an hour’s drive from London.

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Jones was recently appointed vice president of Charleston and is lending pieces from his personal collection to the showcase. 

“The Bloomsbury Group was a reaction against Victorian Britain, and I love the way they shook things up — changing the way people dress and think (like the Beats or the Punks). Their spirit continues to resonate today, and it will for future generations, as people discover Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and their circle for themselves,” said the designer, who is also artistic director of Dior men’s and Fendi womenswear and couture.

Duncan Grant portrait of John Maynard Keynes.The Charleston Trust

“I first went to Charleston when I was around 14, to go sketching in the garden, and I still have the brochure from that day. It was the center of the Bloomsbury universe, down in Sussex, and it brought everyone together — and this sense of art connecting people is something that carries through even now,” he added.

The exhibition will include a self-portrait by Grant, in which he’s wearing a turban; a painting of the economist John Maynard Keynes from 1917, sitting in the Charleston garden wearing an Omega Workshops cap, and a painting by Bell depicting Grant’s aunt, Lady Jane Strachey, in 1923.

Vanessa Bell’s “The Party.”The Charleston Trust

Guests will have the chance to bid on personal items that belonged to the Bloomsbury Group, such as a painting titled “The Party,” otherwise known as “Mrs. Dalloway’s Party,” by Bell that she gifted to her sister Woolf; an Omega Workshops ceramic plate, and an embroidered silk robe by Percy Wyndham Lewis that’s dated somewhere between 1913 and 1914.