Born in Melbourne, Brodzky studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria School. After a brief period in America, he went to London in 1908 where he became a student at the City and Guilds Art School in Kennington. In 1912 he met Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a meeting that developed into a close and productive friendship. Brodzky was a painter in oils and watercolours, a draughtsman and a highly original printmaker. His many woodcuts and lino-cuts have been favourably compared with the prints produced by the German Expressionists and were distinctly avant-garde in an English context. His fluid line drawings were also widely admired and they reflected the influence of his friend Gaudier-Brzeska. Brodzky was associated with the Vorticists and acted as clerk of works for the New York exhibition in 1917. An active member of the London Group, he served on the group's hanging committee during the First World War. Also a talented writer, he wrote acclaimed biographies of Gaudier-Brzeska (1933) and Pascin (1946). A retrospective exhibition was arranged by the Boundary Gallery in 1989.