Eileen Agar

Eileen Agar (1899–1991) was a British artist whose career intersected with Surrealism while remaining somewhat independent of its orthodoxies. Born in Buenos Aires to a Scottish father and American mother, she was educated in England and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1922 to 1926. She also attended Leon Underwood’s school, where she encountered an experimental approach to form that would remain important to her practice.

Agar moved to Paris in 1928 with the Hungarian writer Joseph Bard, entering a cultural milieu that included André Breton, Paul Éluard and other figures associated with Surrealism. Her work during the 1930s increasingly incorporated chance juxtapositions, metamorphic forms and found materials. Yet Agar was never entirely comfortable with Surrealism’s theoretical or automatic procedures; instead, she treated its visual language as a means of exploring memory, fantasy and the instability of perception.

Her participation in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London established her within the British movement. She exhibited paintings, assemblages and objects, including Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse and later Angel of Anarchy. Her practice crossed conventional distinctions between painting, collage, sculpture and photography, often transforming ordinary materials into ambiguous or theatrical forms.

Agar continued working across media throughout the post-war period, developing a looser synthesis of abstraction, figuration and collage. Her autobiography, A Look at My Life, appeared in 1988. She died in London in 1991, leaving a body of work that complicates conventional accounts of British Surrealism and its treatment of women artists.

Spiral Head - Eileen Agar

Spiral Head - Eileen Agar
The Dancer - Eileen Agar

The Dancer - Eileen Agar

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