ABSTRACT
Lewis published his most ambitious books in the 1920s and painted his finest pictures in the 1930s. He was fallow, because of exile and the War, in the 1940s; and had an astounding resurgence, while blind, in the 1950s. The emergence of Lewis’ books brought him out of obscurity, relieved the intense pressure of work, provided a bit more economic security and gave him greater freedom to travel. In August 1927 and again in June 1928 he made his first voyages to America, and remained in New York for several weeks to find publishers and sell paintings. Lewis associated classicism in literature with conservatism in politics. Lewis praised Mussolini’s Fascist society for its superior order and for its treatment of artists like D’Annunzio, Marinetti and Pirandello. In 1926 Lewis had no political position more reasoned and coherent than the contradictory and paradoxical Art of Being Ruled.
