Jessica Stewart Dismorr (3 March 1885 – 29 August 1939) was an English painter and illustrator. Dismorr participated in almost all of the avant-garde groups active in London between 1912 and 1937 and was one of the few English painters of the 1930s to work in a completely abstract manner. She was one of only two women members of the Vorticist movement and also exhibited with the Allied Artists Association, the Seven and Five Society and the London Group. She was the only female contributor to Group X and displayed abstract works at the 1937 Artists' International Association exhibition. Poems and illustrations by Dismorr appeared in several avant-garde publications including Blast, Rhythm and an edition of Axis.
Early life
Dismorr was born at Gravesend in Kent, the fourth of five daughters born to Mary Ann Dismorr, née Clowes, and John Stewart Dismorr, a rich businessman with property interests in South Africa, Canada and Australia. The family moved to Hampstead in the 1890s, where Jessica Dismorr was educated at Kingsley College and where she became head girl.
Dismorr attended the Slade School of Art from 1902 to 1903, before training under Max Bohm at Etaples in 1904, and at the Académie de La Palette in Paris, between 1910 and 1913, where she studied under Jean Metzinger and was in the circle around the Scottish Colourist, John Duncan Fergusson. In Paris, Dismorr shared a studio with the American artist Marguerite Thompson. In 1912 and 1913, Dismorr exhibited Fauvist influenced work with the Allied Artists Association. The Fauvist influence is said to have resulted from her studies at the Académie de La Palette. and also contributed illustrations and a written piece, Monologue, to the second issue in 1915. Dismorr exhibited with the Vorticists again in New York in January 1917 at the Penguin Club.
thumb|Abstract composition ca. 1915
Apart from Dismorr, the only other female member of the Vorticist group was Helen Saunders. from 1961–62, shows the seven males dominating the foreground and the two women behind with Dismorr in the doorway being the furthest away. According to Kate Lechmere, the financial backer of Blast and the Rebel Art Centre, Dismorr had a difficult relationship with Wyndham Lewis, and was, along with Helen Saunders, one of the "little lapdogs who wanted to be Lewis’s slaves and do everything for him". R. H. Wilenski wrote the introduction to the exhibition cataloue. Dismorr was one of seven British women artists included in the 1936 Die Olympiade ouder Dictatwar exhibition in Amsterdam which aimed to counter the Nazi condemnation of Modernism and modern art.
Dismorr died by suicide by hanging in London on 29 August 1939, five days before Britain declared war on Germany. The exhibition was curated by the Gallery in partnership with Dr Alicia Foster.