AN EXHIBITION inspired by a visit to Compton Verney by painter and designer Enid Marx in the 1990s and the work she donated opens later this month.
Marx visited Compton Verney when it was being transformed into an art gallery and she donated the English folk art she had built over decades with her lifelong partner, historian Margaret Lambert.
More than 25 years later, that gift has inspired the first major exhibition dedicated to Marx, considered one of the country’s most influential yet overlooked designers.
The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design will explore the life and work of the artist behind London Underground’s iconic seat fabrics.
The exhibition will follow Marx’s life through fabric and design, exploring her family influences, artistic education and professional career.
The collection brings together loans from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library and the Crafts Study Centre alongside objects already housed at Compton Verney.
Senior curator Oli McCall said: “Enid Marx visited Compton Verney in 1998, when the mansion house was still undergoing its transformation into an art gallery, and was inspired to donate the collection of ‘popular art’ she had lovingly assembled with historian Margaret Lambert to the organisation.
“Since then, this treasure-trove of objects with which Marx and Lambert lived, and which inspired Marx’s design work in many ways, has delighted audiences here, making Compton Verney the perfect venue for this groundbreaking exhibition.
“Underpinned by years of research by Dr Az Crawford into Marx’s life and work, this show will give visitors an unparalleled insight into the work of one of the most significant designers in modern British history, tracing her professional development from her earliest influences and education at the Royal College of Art – where her cohort was heralded as ‘an outbreak of talent’ – through communities of influential craftswomen with whom she socialised and collaborated to the major commissions she achieved in the post-war years from London Transport, which resulted in her iconic designs for seating fabric for London Underground trains.”
Born in London to an entrepreneurial Jewish family, Marx studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art between 1922 and 1925. She died in May 1998, aged 95.
Dr Az Crawford, lead curator of The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design, added: “Marx has long been overlooked for her role as a major British modernist. This exhibition offers a timely redress of the significance of her textiles beyond the surface, showing how pattern design configured and reflects personal, social and cultural politics of the first quarter of the twentieth century.”
The exhibition runs from July 18 to January 3 2027.
