Eileen Agar (1899–1991)

National Portrait Gallery, London

British painter, born in Buenos Aires, the daughter of a British businessman who made a fortune there. She moved to England as a child and studied with Leon Underwood, 1924, at the Slade School, 1925–6, and in Paris, 1928–30. During the 1930s she 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). As well as paintings she made mixed-media objects such as Angel of Anarchy, an imaginary portrait of Herbert Read (1940, Tate). In the 1940s and 1950s she changed direction, painting cool Tachiste abstracts, although her work still retained Surrealist elements.

Artworks

Learning resources

Stories

Eileen Agar, and the masterpiece in the attic
Andrew Lambirth
Surrealist of the sea: the symbolism of Eileen Agar
Ruth Millington
Women artists of the 1920s: politics, progress and pushback
Alicia Foster
Six women artists of British Surrealism
Philomena Epps

Find out more

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Biography on Oxford Art Online

Biography on Wikipedia

Biography from LISS LLEWELLYN

Eileen Agar was born in Buenos Aires and moved to England as a child, attending the Byam Shaw School of Art (1919), Brook Green School of Art (1924) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1925-6).

In 1929, she left her husband and moved to Paris, where she associated with Paul Éluard, Ezra Pound and André Breton (1896–1966).

She held her first solo show in 1933, at London’s Bloomsbury Gallery, and became a member of the LG in 1934. Over the next decade her work became increasingly Surrealist, and she contributed artworks to the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.

Agar painted radical works that explored female sexuality and womanhood. Remarking on her painting Autobiography of an Embryo (1933–4) in relation to her decision to remain childless, she explained, “I was more interested in becoming a painter than in being a mother”. Her autobiography, A Look at My Life, was published in 1988.

^{Biography from Liss Llewellyn}

Biography from Liss Llewellyn

Eileen Agar was born in Buenos Aires and moved to England as a child, attending the Byam Shaw School of Art (1919), Brook Green School of Art (1924) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1925-6).

In 1929, she left her husband and moved to Paris, where she associated with Paul Éluard, Ezra Pound and André Breton (1896–1966).

She held her first solo show in 1933, at London’s Bloomsbury Gallery, and became a member of the LG in 1934. Over the next decade her work became increasingly Surrealist, and she contributed artworks to the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.

Agar painted radical works that explored female sexuality and womanhood. Remarking on her painting Autobiography of an Embryo (1933–4) in relation to her decision to remain childless, she explained, “I was more interested in becoming a painter than in being a mother”. Her autobiography, A Look at My Life, was published in 1988.

^{Biography from Liss Llewellyn}