Creation Myth 1936

Wyndham Lewis painted 'Creation Myth' with oils, but when exactly is a bit of a mystery. Look at the geometric shapes bathed in earth tones, blues, and oranges. I imagine Lewis layering, scraping back, then building the figures up again. I wonder if he wrestled with this one. What did he want to say about origins? The shapes hint at figures, but they also feel like architectural forms, or maybe even machines. Look at how the oranges and reds seem to glow from within, as if something is being born in that center ground. I think Lewis was obsessed with structure and order. You can see it across his work, a kind of controlled chaos. This painting feels like a conversation with cubism and futurism, but with Lewis’s own hard-edged spin. It reminds me of Picabia too. Painters are always chatting to each other like that, even across decades, pushing and pulling at what painting can do.