Ithell Colquhoun

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Ithell Colquhoun
British India
Died11 April 1988(1988-04-11) (aged 81)
Cornwall, England
NationalityBritish
EducationSlade School of Fine Art
Known forSurrealist painter and author

Ithell Colquhoun (

occultist, poet and author. Stylistically her artwork was affiliated with Surrealism. In the early 1930s she met André Breton in Paris, and later started working with Surrealist automatism techniques in her writing and painting. In the late 1930s, Colquhoun was part of the British Surrealist Group before being expelled because she refused to renounce her association with occult groups, including the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Fellowship of Isis.[1]
Despite her break with the movement, Colquhoun was a lifelong adherent to Surrealism and its automatic techniques.

Colquhoun was born in Shillong in British India, but brought up in the United Kingdom. After studying at Cheltenham Ladies College and the Slade School of Art, she lived briefly in Paris before moving back to London. She spent the latter part of her life in Cornwall, where she died in 1988.

Biography

Margaret Ithell Colquhoun was born in

G.R.S. Mead's Quest Society, and in 1930 published her first article, "The Prose of Alchemy", in the society's journal.[4] In 1929, Colquhoun received the Slade's Summer Composition Prize for her painting Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes, and in 1931 it was exhibited in the Royal Academy.[7] Despite her studies at the Slade, Colquhoun was primarily a self-taught artist.[3]

After leaving the Slade in 1931, Colquhoun spent several years travelling.[8] She established a studio in Paris,[7] where she first encountered Surrealists, including René Magritte, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray[9] and attended the Académie Colarossi in 1931[9] where she read Peter Neagoe's 1932 essay What is Surrealism?[10] During the 1930s she also spent time in Greece, Corsica, and Tenerife.[7] While in Greece, Colquhoun met and became infatuated with a woman, Andromache "Kyria" Kazou, who was the subject of several drawings and paintings and an unpublished manuscript, Lesbian Shore. Kazou appears to have visited Colquhoun in Paris and Colquhoun later invited her to move to London so they could live together, though Kazou never did so.[11]

Colquhoun exhibited three paintings in Paris in 1933, and one work at the

Royal Society of Scotland in 1934.[12] In 1936, she had her first solo exhibition at the Cheltenham Art Gallery,[3] where she showed 91 works.[13] A solo exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London followed in the same year.[7]

Colquhoun's interest in Surrealism deepened after seeing Salvador Dalí lecture in 1936

Colquhoun's interest in Surrealism deepened after seeing

E.L.T. Mesens' demands that the surrealists should not be members of any other groups, which Colquhoun felt would interfere with her studies of occultism. This led to Colquhoun's exclusion from other exhibitions organised by the British surrealists, but she continued to work with surrealist principles.[14]

In the 1940s, Colquhoun met and began a relationship with the Russian-born Italian artist and critic Toni del Renzio. Though he criticised her art as "sterile abstractions" in an essay in his magazine Arson in March 1942, he soon moved in with her, and in December that year she exhibited at a show at the International Art Centre in London, organised by del Renzio.[16] They married in 1943.[3] This marriage further alienated her from the British surrealist movement, as del Renzio had his own rivalry with Mesens, due to del Renzio's ambition to become the leader of that group.[17] According to Eric Ratcliffe, their studio in Bedford Park, London, became an open house for friends, other artists and like-minded individuals. The marriage later became unhappy and they divorced – "acrimoniously", according to Matthew Gale – in 1947.[7] From 1945, Colquhoun lived and worked in Parkhill Road, Hampstead.

Colquhoun began to visit

Second World War. From 1947, she rented a studio near Penzance, and divided her time between there and London;[18] in 1959 she moved to Paul, Cornwall.[19] She remained in Cornwall for the rest of her life.[3] After her move to Cornwall, Colquhoun increasingly focused on publishing her writing,[20] and from the 1960s her output of visual art substantially declined in favour of her writing and her occult activities.[21]

She had solo exhibitions in 1947 at the Mayor Gallery, in 1972 at Exeter Museum and Art Gallery, and in 1976 at the Newlyn Orion Gallery.[22] Colquhoun continued making art until around 1983. She spent her final years in a nursing home in Lamorna, where she died in 1988.[23]

Colquhoun left her literary works to the writer

The Samaritans, the Noise Abatement Society, and the Sister Perpetua Wing of St Anthony's Hospital, North Cheam.[24] In 2019, the Tate acquired the National Trust's holdings of Colquhoun's works.[25]

Art

Though only formally involved with the Surrealist movement in England for a few years, Colquhoun first gained her reputation as a surrealist, and identified as a surrealist for the rest of her life.[26] She used many automatic techniques,[3] which were described in André Breton's first surrealist manifesto as a defining feature of surrealism,[27] and invented several herself.[3]

Colquhoun began to experiment with automatic techniques in 1939,

frottage and collage. She developed new techniques such as superautomatism, stillomancy, parsemage, and entopic graphomania, writing about them in her article "The Mantic Stain".[3] Automatism continued to be an important part of Colquhoun's artistic practice for the rest of her life,[29] and following her split from the British surrealist movement it also became a key part of her spiritual activities.[30] In 1948 she demonstrated automatic techniques on British television, on a BBC programme called The Eye of the Artist, and in 1951 she published another article, "Children of the Mantic Stain".[31]

Colquhoun had an early interest in biology, and studies of plants and flowers were a recurring theme in her art throughout her life. Many of her early notebooks contained very detailed drawings of plants,[32] and her early works included a series of enlarged images of flora, occupying the full canvas and painted almost photographically.[3]

Colquhoun's work often explored themes of sex and

patriarchal themes in the art of other surrealists – for instance, where they drew landscapes as women's bodies. Colquhoun's Gouffres Amers 1939 shows a male body as a landscape.[15] Several of her works explore themes of castration and male impotence, including Gouffres Amers and The Pine Family, while she portrays female sexuality much more positively, such as in Scylla.[35] She was also deeply interested in androgyny,[36] particularly in the early 1940s,[37] and produced several works on the theme.[38]

Stylistically, some her works have been described as "macabre" and "sinister".[39] In 1939, she created the work Tepid Waters (Rivières Tièdes) which was displayed at her solo exhibition at the Mayor Gallery the same year. The painting, based on a church in Corsica,[40] may allude to the Spanish Civil War.[3]

In the 1940s, Colquhoun began to create works exploring the themes of consciousness and the subconscious.[3] Her interest in psychology and dreams also attached her to the Surrealist movement. Three works which stand out during the 1940s are The Pine Family, which deals with dismemberment and castration, A Visitation which shows a flat heart-shape with multi-coloured beams of light and Dreaming Leaps, an homage to Sonia Araquistain, the 24-year-old daughter of the ambassador of the ex-Second Spanish Republic in London who committed suicide by jumping nude from the top of a building.[3]

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Colquhoun turned her attention towards collages rather than painting. The last retrospective of her work was held at the Newlyn Orion Gallery in 1976, which showed a large number of collages, many of which were inspired by those of Kurt Schwitters.[41]

Writing

Along with her visual art, Colquhoun was a prolific writer, producing works including poetry, essays, novels, and travel guides.[42] From the 1950s, Colquhoun's output as a visual artist decreased, and she increasingly focused on her poetry and essay writing.[43]

Colquhoun published her first article, "The Prose of Alchemy", in 1930.

Mass Observation project.[47] She wrote articles on automatism: "The Mantic Stain" – which she claimed was the first English-language essay on surrealist automatism[44] – in 1949, "Children of the Mantic Stain" in 1951, and "Notes on Automatism" in 1980.[48] Later in life she contributed articles to surrealist revival journals.[49]

Colquhoun wrote three travel books: The Crying of the Wind and Living Stones, about Ireland and Cornwall respectively, were published in the 1950s; a third book on Egypt, begun in the 1960s, was never published.

Tree of Life in 1973, and Osmazone, published in 1983, was an anthology of prose poems, many from much earlier in her life.[55]

Reception and legacy

Colquhoun gained an early reputation within the British Surrealist movement, though in later years she became better known as an occultist.[56] Although her work has largely been discussed in terms of its connection to Surrealism, Colquhoun sometimes stated her independence from the movement. In 1939, the same year she joined the English Surrealist group, she described herself as an 'independent artist' in a review for the London Bulletin.[57]

Though Colquhoun was a relatively unknown artist by her death in 1988 compared to other women surrealists such as Eileen Agar and Dorothea Tanning, more recently there has been renewed interest in her work from feminist and esoteric viewpoints.[58] In 2012, the scholar Amy Hale noted that Colquhoun "is becoming recognized as one of the most interesting and prolific esoteric thinkers and artists of the twentieth century".[56] Hale argued that through Colquhoun's work "we can see an interplay of themes and movements which characterizes the trajectory of certain British subcultures ranging from Surrealism to the Earth Mysteries movement and also gives us a rare insight into the thoughts and processes of a working magician".[56]

In 2020, Colquhoun's work featured in the British Surrealism exhibition at the

Whitechapel Art Gallery,[60] the Unsettling Landscapes exhibition at St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery,[61] and was the focus of an exhibition at Unit London, Song of Songs.[62] In 2025, Tate St Ives hosted the exhibition Ithell Colquhoun: Between Two Worlds,[63] the largest exhibition of Colquhoun's work to date, with more than 170 of her artworks and writings on display.[64]

Bibliography

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Ithell Colquhoun". Fulgur Press.
  2. ISBN 978-0714878775
    .
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/64737. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. ^ a b Morrisson 2014, p. 592.
  5. ^ Hale 2020, p. 30.
  6. ^ Shillitoe 2019, p. 18.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Gale, Matthew (1997). "Ithell Colquhoun". Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  8. ^ Hale 2020, p. 33.
  9. ^ a b Llewellyn, Sacha (4 September 2024). "Ithell Colquhoun, High Priestess of British Surrealism". Centre Pompidou.
  10. ^ Ratcliffe, Eric (2007). Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer Surrealist Artist, Occulist, Writer and Poet. Mandrake of Oxford. p. 35.
  11. ^ Hale 2020, pp. 34–35.
  12. ^ Hale 2020, p. 36.
  13. ^ Hale 2020, p. 37.
  14. ^ a b c Ferentinou 2011, p. 2.
  15. ^ a b c Ades 1980, p. 40.
  16. ^ Hale 2020, p. 71.
  17. ^ Shillitoe 2019, p. 20.
  18. ^ Hale 2020, p. 97.
  19. ^ Hale 2020, p. 122.
  20. ^ Hale 2020, p. 104.
  21. ^ Hale 2020, p. 106.
  22. doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00040848
    .
  23. ^ Hale 2020, p. 270.
  24. ^ Shillitoe 2023, pp. 193–198.
  25. ^ Brown, Mark (15 July 2019). "Tate acquires vast archive of British surrealist Ithell Colquhoun". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  26. ^ Hale 2012, pp. 307–308.
  27. ^ Hale 2012, p. 310.
  28. ^ Macfarlane, Robert; Marshall, Steve; Clarke, Gill. Unsettling Landscapes: The Art of the Eerie. p. 80.
  29. ^ Hale 2020, p. 47.
  30. ^ Hale 2020, p. 79.
  31. ^ Hale 2020, p. 80.
  32. ^ Hale 2012, p. 308.
  33. ^ Hale 2012, p. 313.
  34. ^ Hale 2012, p. 312.
  35. ^ Hale 2020, p. 61.
  36. ^ Ferentinou 2011, p. 9.
  37. ^ Hale 2020, p. 188.
  38. ^ Ferentinou 2011, p. 10.
  39. ^ Portrait of the Artist: Artists' Portraits published by 'Art News & Review' 1949–1960. London: The Tate Gallery. 1989. p. 85.
  40. ^ "Rivières Tièdes (Mediterranée)". Southampton City Art Gallery. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  41. ^ Ratcliffe, Eric (2007). Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer Surrealist Artist, Occulist, Writer, and Poet. Oxford: Madrake of Oxford. p. 177.
  42. ^ Hale 2012, p. 309.
  43. ^ a b Hale 2012, p. 314.
  44. ^ a b Morrisson 2014, p. 593.
  45. ^ Colquhoun 2014, p. 187.
  46. ^ Hale 2020, pp. 74–75.
  47. ^ Shillitoe 2019, pp. 20–21.
  48. ^ Bachet 2023, pp. 55–56.
  49. ^ Ferentinou 2011, p. 3.
  50. ^ Hale 2020, p. 12.
  51. ^ Morrisson 2014, pp. 604–605.
  52. ^ Hale 2012, p. 319.
  53. ^ Bachet 2023, pp. 49–50.
  54. ^ Morrisson 2020, p. 157.
  55. ^ Hale 2020, p. 107.
  56. ^ a b c Hale 2012, p. 307.
  57. ISBN 1-884964-21-4
    .
  58. ^ Grenfell 2022, pp. 39–40.
  59. ^ "British Surrealism Press Release". Dulwich Picture Gallery.
  60. ^ "Phantoms of Surrealism". Whitechapel Gallery.
  61. ^ Macfarlane, Robert; Marshall, Steve; Clarke, Gill. Unsettling Landscapes: The Art of the Eerie. pp. 53, 80–81.
  62. ^ "Frieze Week London 2021: Pull Out Guide". Artlyst.
  63. ^ "Ithell Colquhoun: Between Two Worlds".
  64. ^ Hallett, Florence (30 January 2025). "Two-Venue Tate Show Highlights the Surreal Art of Cornish Occultist Ithell Colquhoun". The Art Newspaper.
  65. ^ a b "Amy Hale / Curriculum Vitae > Chapters", independent.academia.edu. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
  66. ^ "Taro As Colour (Book)", fulgur.co.uk/. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
  67. ^ A Walking Flame, mitpress.mit.edu. Retrieved 25 March 2024.

Sources
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