Background
Eileen Agar was born on December 1, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of a British businessman who made a fortune there. Then she moved to England as a child.
Eileen Agar was born on December 1, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of a British businessman who made a fortune there. Then she moved to England as a child.
After attending Heathfield St Mary's School, Eileen studied, beginning in 1919, at the Byam Shaw School of Art. Then, in 1924, she studied under Leon Underwood at his school at Brook Green. She also attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1925 to 1926. Finally, she studied art in Paris from 1928 to 1930.
Eileen was a classically trained painter. While living in Paris, Agar met the surrealists André Breton and Paul Éluard and became puzzled by their works. She made a couple of friendly relationships with people belonging to the circle of surrealists and she started exhibiting with them in England and abroad. During the 1930s Eileen became one of the leading British exponents of Surrealism, taking part in several of the major international exhibitions of the movement, although she was never much concerned with its polemical side. In the 1930s, the artist’s work was focused mainly on natural and found objects arranged in a spontaneous, intuitive and light-hearted manner. One of the greatest examples of such work is her "Bum-Thumb Rock", which is a collection of photographs of an interesting rock formation. During the mid-1930s, Agar began renting a summer house at Swanage in Dorset.
As well as paintings she made mixed-media objects such as "Angel of Anarchy", an imaginary portrait of Herbert Read. In the 1940s and 1950s she changed direction, painting cool Tachiste abstracts, although her work still retained Surrealist elements. By 1940, thanks to her many acquaintances and a unique nature of her work, Agar’s pieces started to appear in surrealist exhibitions all over the Europe and the United States – in Amsterdam, New York, Paris and even in Asia, in Tokyo. Between 1946 and 1985, Agar had around 15 solo exhibits and by the 1960s she started producing tachist paintings mixed with unexpected surrealist elements.
Eileen published an autobiography, "A Look at My Life", in 1988; the book is full of famous names, for she knew many eminent artists and writers. It concludes with the words: "I hope to die in a sparkling moment." Nowadays, Agar’s paintings and sculptures can be found in numerous collections including Derby Art Gallery, Bradford, and the UK Government collection.
Eileen Agar was best known for her association with the Surrealist movement and her paintings and sculptures full of imaginative playfulness and marine motifs. She was the only professional British female artist who exhibited at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. "Angel of Anarchy" is the most famous Agar’s piece and a great representative of her entire oeuvre. She is also known for her ability to find connections between apparently unrelated forms and materials, which is an essential skill in order to build aesthetically pleasing, yet unusual artworks.
Erotic Landscape
Bum-Thumb Rock, Ploumanach, Brittany
Bird Woman
Surreal Figures
Ladybird
Three Symbols
Untitled
Past and Present
Self-Portrait
Floral Eyes
Lewis Carroll with Alice
An Exceptional Occurrence
Carousing Computers
War
The Dance
Rite of Spring
Slow Movement
Fish Basket
Untitled
Head
Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse
Fish Circus
Acolytes
Still Life of Flowers
Abstract figures
Seaweed Collage
Head of Dylan Thomas
Luminous Forms
Surrealist Hat
Portrait head
To A Nightingale
Beetles and hand
Figura
Lord of the Flies
Battle of Flowers
Ploumanach
Philosopher's Stones
Marine Object
The Autobiography of an Embryo
Jug of Verse
Psychodelic Dream
The Sower
The Shell
Precious Stones
Fighter Pilot
Angel of Anarchy
The Reaper
Figures in a Garden
Rocks at Ploumenach, Brittany
Portrait
Return of Nautilus
Agar has introduced new elegance and new, unexpected forms through her art. She liked to see surrealism as "the interpenetrating of reason and unreason", and valued it for its wit, irreverence and joke-making. She would go as far as daydreaming, but she kept control of her images. She was interested in making shapes, making visual metaphors. Her working procedures rarely contained too much precision and Agar’s spontaneity became one of the trademark qualities of her work.
Agar was adventurous and innovative, passionate about experimenting with new materials and techniques.
Eileen met Paul Nash while in Dorset and two of them got engaged in a powerful relationship. In 1926, Agar met the Hungarian writer Joseph Bard and later they married in 1940.
