Eileen Agar

Eileen Agar (born December 1, 1899, Quinta la Lila, Flores, near Buenos Aires, Argentina—died November 17, 1991, London, England) was a British artist known for her Surrealist paintings, collages, and objects. She was one of the few women to be included in the noted International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936.

Agar was born in Argentina to a Scottish father and an American mother. Her family settled in London when she was a child. Having been born into a wealthy family, Agar was expected to enter society and to marry well. However, her artistic talents were discovered at an early age, and she was encouraged by her teachers to develop those skills. She studied at Leon Underwood’s Brook Green School of Art in 1920–21, and, while there, she met English sculptor Henry Moore. She then attended the Slade School of Fine Art (1921–24), where her circle of artistic acquaintances grew to include theatrical designer Oliver Messel, illustrator Rex Whistler, and photographer Cecil Beaton. In 1925 she eloped with a fellow student, Robin Bartlett, of whom her parents disapproved. The couple divorced in 1929, after Agar had fallen in love with Hungarian writer Joseph Bard (whom she married in 1940).

Agar and Bard traveled across Europe from 1928 to 1930, meeting noted literary and artistic figures, including poets Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats, painter Adrian Stokes, and novelist Evelyn Waugh. During that time Agar also studied under Czech abstract painter František Foltýn in France. Her early works from the 1920s were largely composed of a series of Post-Impressionistic portraits. Her tutelage under Foltýn and her interactions with various avant-garde figures of the era brought new exploration to her work, and she began creating more abstract pieces, such as Movement in Space and Modern Muse (both 1931). Persuaded by her Slade colleagues Moore and artist Paul Nash (with whom she later had an affair), she began exhibiting her works in 1933 as a part of the London Group, a collection of artists who rebelled against the traditional style of the Royal Academy. That year she also had her first solo exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery. In 1936 art critics Herbert Read and Roland Penrose selected three of her paintings and five of her Surrealist objects for the International Surrealists Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries that summer. She was the only British woman included in the show.

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One of her best-known paintings, Quadriga (1935), was among those selected for exhibition. Inspired by a photograph of a horse’s head from the Parthenon, Agar repeated and transformed the image four times on a canvas, provoking a connection with the four horses associated with the Apocalypse. Another of her significant works was a remake of Angel of Anarchy, a plaster cast of her head covered with various materials. The original, created in 1937, had been lost, so she designed a new piece in 1940. Agar included embroidery, feathers, beads, and shells in the second version; she also added a blindfold to reflect the uncertainty of the future at the moment. Several of her later works, such as Precious Stones (1936) and The Battle Cry (Bullet-Proof painting) (1938), also feature elements of collage. From 1936 to 1940 her art was exhibited at international Surrealist exhibitions in New York City, Tokyo, Paris, and Amsterdam.

Agar’s career was interrupted by World War II, and she never achieved the same level of international success after the war. She continued to paint, from 1965 mainly with acrylics instead of oils. A retrospective exhibition in 1987 briefly revitalized interest in her work. Her close connections with the British Surrealist community and her role as a leading female figure in the Surrealist movement have cemented her place in the history of Surrealism.