ithell colquhoun

Surrealist Painter and Occultist

Deceased 1906 – 1988 
 
Suggested by Stuart Dow and William Charnock
 
Writer, poet, and surrealist artist, Ithell Colquhoun was born in India and educated at Cheltenham Art School and the Slade School of Art where she won the summer composition prize and was shown at the Royal Academy. Colquhoun was especially interested in surrealism and the occult.  
 
Colquhoun contributed to the Surrealist  London Bulletin and joined the movement in 1939, sharing an exhibition with Roland Penrose in 1939. Shortly after, she met the Surrealists’ leader André Breton in Paris just as ‘automatic’ painting techniques were becoming important. She contributed to capturing psychic space in painting through her automatic painting techniques and theoretical texts. Despite these parallels with Surrealism, Colquhoun broke with the movement in 1940 rather than sacrifice her interest in the occult.  
 
Colquhoun moved to Cornwall in the late 1940s, where her interest in automatism and the esoteric became combined. She was an acknowledged authority on the occult and contributed texts to various periodicals. She exhibited with the London Group and at the Leicester Galleries, and with the Women’s International Art Club in the 1950s and 1960s.  
 
Colquhoun first lived at Lamorna in Vow Cave Studio from 1947 and later moved to a cottage in Paul. Her 1957 book “The Living Stones” details her establishment of her studio and her layered, numinous interactions with Cornish history and landscape. Renewed interest in British Surrealism led to several retrospectives in the 1970s. She died on 11 April 1988 
 
Stuart says about her work, “The most brilliant and intuitive and intelligent art ever created in Cornwall. Her perceptions have enriched my life.” 
 
tate.org
hypatia-trust.org.uk
womenincornwall.org
penleehouse.org.uk