Editing David Bomberg (section)

==Pre-war avant-garde==
[[File:Bomberg, The Mud Bath.jpg|thumb|''[[The Mud Bath]]'' (1914; [[Tate Gallery]]).]]
Expelled from the Slade in the Summer of 1913, Bomberg formed a series of loose affiliations with several groups involved with the contemporary English avant-garde, embarking on a brief and acrimonious association with the [[Bloomsbury Group]]'s [[Omega Workshops]] before exhibiting with the [[Camden Town Group]] in December 1913. His enthusiasm for the dynamism and aesthetics of the machine age gave him a natural affinity with [[Wyndham Lewis]]'s emerging [[Vorticism|vorticist]] movement, and five of his works featured in the founding exhibition of the [[London Group]] in 1914.<ref name="dnb" /> Still, Bomberg was staunchly independent and despite Lewis' attempts he never officially joined Vorticism.<ref name=Hyman/> In July 1914 he refused involvement with the Vorticist [[literary magazine]] ''[[BLAST (magazine)|BLAST]]'' and in June of the following year his work featured only in the "Invited to show" section of the vorticist exhibition at London's Dore Gallery.
In 1914 he met his first wife Alice Mayes a resourceful and practical woman about ten years older than him who had worked with Kosslov's Ballet Company. Their mutual interest in experimental dance and the Russian ballet may have helped bring them together. Alice helped Bomberg in the early part of his career both with financial support and in influencing his appearance and character.
1914 saw the highpoint of his early career – a solo exhibition at the [[Chenil Gallery]] in [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]] which attracted positive reviews from [[Roger Fry]] and [[T. E. Hulme]] and attracted favourable attention from experimental artists nationally and internationally.<ref name="tate" /> The exhibition featured several of Bomberg's early masterpieces, most notably ''[[The Mud Bath]]'' (1914), which was hung on an outside wall surrounded by [[Union Flag]]s – causing "the horses drawing the 29 bus... to shy at it as they came round the corner of King's Road."<ref name="hubbard" />
<blockquote>
"I look upon Nature while I live in a steel city" he explained in the exhibition catalogue "I APPEAL to a Sense of Form ... My object is the construction of Pure Form. I reject everything in painting that is not Pure Form."<ref name="tate" />
</blockquote>

With the help of [[Augustus John]], Bomberg sold two paintings from this exhibition to the influential American collector [[John Quinn (collector)|John Quinn]].<ref name="raynor" />
Alice and David enjoyed a trip to Paris with the proceeds of the sale of several pictures in 1914 which led to them marrying in 1916 after Bomberg had enlisted in the Royal Engineers in November 1915.