DREAMS COME TRUE

The Whitechapel Gallery recalls the scintillating surrealist vision of the British artist Eileen Agar

‘Eileen Agar brings the colour of dreams to everything she sees.’ So said the French poet Paul Eluard of the Argentina-born British artist, whose distinct blend of cubism and surrealism shaped her detailed yet irreverent style. The Slade-trained painter and collagist discovered these movements early in her career while living on Paris’ Left Bank in the 1920s. At the time, the area was a haven for revolutionary artists including Picasso and Man Ray, with whom she holidayed, as well as her lover Paul Nash. Incorporating images inspired by ancient mythologies, the natural world and sexuality, Agar created bold, colourful and playfully paradoxical canvases, including the large-scale Autobiography of

an Embryo, which presents an eternal cycle of renewal, and Quadriga, depicting four identical horse heads overlaid with abstract patterns.

In the 1930s, on her return to London, Agar began to include uncanny found objects into her creations – such as feathers, shells and marine debris – and used them to make sculptures. More than 15 of these will feature in a new exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, alongside over 100 paintings, drawings and collages spanning Agar’s 70-year career. It will be the largest-ever display of this remarkable artist’s work, capturing her dynamic vision, not simply of dreams, but of life.

‘Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy’ opens at Whitechapel Gallery (www.whitechapel gallery.org) this spring.

Agar’s works, clockwise from above: ‘Quadriga’ (1935).

‘Dance of Peace’.(1945). Agar in 1936

Clockwise from above: Eileen Agar’s ‘Angel of Anarchy’ (1936–1940).

‘Precious Stones’ (1936).

Untitled collage (1936)

‘Rock 3’ (1985).

Her ‘Alice with Lewis Carroll’ (1961).