The Heat Wave

While at the Slade, Roberts was influenced by Post-Impressionism and Cubism. In 1914 he founded with Wyndham Lewis the Vorticist movement in response to French modernism, and in rebellion against Roger Fry and his Omega Workshop, although he preferred the word "Cubist". He later fell out badly with Lewis. His early figures were stiff and stylised through geometrically simplified forms. By the 1930s his angular style for figures was replaced by a rounder, more sculptural approach, as is the case here.