Paule Vézelay (née Marjorie Watson-Williams, 1892-1984) studied at Bristol School of Art, London School of Art and Chelsea Polytechnic. In 1926, she adopted the name Paule Vézelay and moved to Paris, becoming an active member of the Parisian avant-garde and associating with Sophie Tauber-Arp, Jean Arp and André Masson.

Vézelay was one of the first British artists to turn fully to abstraction in the late 1920s, when it was still out of favour in Britain. In 1934, Vézelay was invited to join Abstraction-Création - a collective of abstract artists founded in Paris in 1931 with the aim of promoting and legitimising non-representational art. In 1953 Vézelay joined Le Groupe Espace, an association of geometric abstract artists and architects founded in Paris in 1951. Le Groupe artists were concerned with space in art and were influenced by the pre-war movements of Constructivism and Neo-Plasticism. Vézelay exhibited with them multiple times and presided over the British branch.

‘White and Cream Form with Three Circles’, dating to 1953, belongs to her Group Espace period. A bicolour polygon form stands out against a neutral ground, its geometric plane standing in contrast with the blurry organic circular forms overlaid. The painting subtly expressed the influence of Neo-Plasticism as adopted by Le Groupe. This is clear from its use of geometric form to create an asymmetrical but balanced composition, informed by a purity of line and colour typical of Vezelay’s work from that period.

In 1983, ‘White and Cream Form with Three Circles’ was exhibited in a retrospective of Vezelay’s production at the Tate Gallery, bringing her work into the public eye and giving the artist due recognition. In 2000, this work was once more exhibited as part of a second retrospective show at England & Co. Gallery, London. Vezelay’s artworks are at the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the Tate (London), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (Norfolk), the Jerwood Collection, Towner Eastbourne (London), Leeds Art Gallery, and the Arts Council Collection (Southbank Centre, London)