The magic surrealism of Ithell Colquhoun

Written By Philip Kane

You can also read this article and see more photos at A Beautiful Resistance.

Academic art historians have a way of "discovering" artists who they have, themselves, neglected or even casually obscured for decades. This is especially true for women artists, and apparently even more so if those women happen to have been Surrealists. In the recent past I've noted such "discovery" of, among others, Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar, Toyen, Dora Maar and Claude Cahun. And now it's the turn of Ithell Colquhoun.

Although several biographies of Colquhoun [i], and various editions of her writings, have been published, my impression is that Colquhoun is still not as widely known in occult circles as she deserves to be, even as she becomes more familiar to the art world. That's unfortunate, since Colquhoun's work fuses Surrealism with the esoteric in ways that provoke the active imagination and hint at mysteries waiting to be explored further. Hopefully the current exhibition at the Tate will play a role in broadening and deepening awareness of this remarkable artist.

Ithell Colquhoun was born in India in 1906 but grew up in Cheltenham, England. She trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, and mainly painted mythological and biblical subjects, until her first meeting with Surrealism on a visit to Paris in 1931. The immediate consequence of that encounter was a series of paintings portraying otherworldly, exotic plants. She described their style as "magic realism". Seeing them in the flesh, so to speak, it's evident they contain an eroticism that points to Colquhoun's nascent exploration of female sexuality, a strand within her work that grew more prominent as her artistic career progressed.

However, career might be the wrong term for an artistic path that was deflected, and that grew idiosyncratic enough in isolation for Colquhoun to become regarded as an outsider. Through the late 1930s, she exhibited her work as a central member of the then British Surrealist Group. At the same time, she was actively involved with various occult societies. In 1940, ELT Mesens, a Belgian artist and gallery owner who had effectively become the leader of British Surrealism at that time, declared that members of the Surrealist Group could not belong to any other group or organisation. Colquhoun was among those who refused to obey Mesens' diktat, and was duly expelled.

By the late 1940s, she had made a profound spiritual connection with the landscapes and mysteries of Cornwall, and that had an increasing influence on her art. Her studio at Vow Cave in Lamorna became a kind of artistic laboratory where she could experiment with techniques and ideas, as her relationship with the land deepened into intimacy.

Colquhoun's work from the late forties onward cannot be separated either from that relationship or from her occult studies and explorations. The current Tate Britain exhibition reflects that - there is no shying away from the centrality of Colquhoun's occult interests, or from her continuing commitment to Surrealism as a guiding principle.

Among Colquhoun's many works of interest to pagans and occultists, the most important include the designs for a Tarot deck that she created in the 1970s. Her process for these combined the Surrealist practice of automatism (working, as far as possible, without conscious or preconceived thought and direction) with her understanding of occult colour theory and of the Tarot itself. Her process was innovative, dripping enamel paint onto the surface, and resulted in abstract forms reminiscent of nebulae that have fluidity and subtle depths even in their fixed, two-dimensional state. The full sequence of seventy-eight Taro designs is prominently displayed in the Tate exhibition.[ii]

My personal suspicion is that, as with paintings by other Surrealists closely engaged with occult ideas such as Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, Colquhoun's vivid though often more abstract works are designed to draw the viewer in, to act as instruments for visual meditation and imaginative exploration. Of course this is not an easy hypothesis to test in the context of a busy art gallery, but could be a valuable experiment given that reproductions of Colquhoun's works, and not only the Taro already mentioned, are readily accessible.

While the Tate show is obviously focused on Colquhoun's output as a visual artist, there is also space given to her work as a writer. This ranged through her many reflections on aspects of the magical arts; her Surrealist novels The Goose of Hermogenes and I Saw Water (the latter unpublished in her lifetime); a substantial body of poetry that includes most notably The Grimoire of the Entangled Thicket; and a selection of travel writings such as The Living Stones (an exploration of Cornwall), and The Crying of the Wind (an account of her travels in Ireland).

Ithell Colquhoun's paintings are a delight, suffused with magic, marvellous imagery, eroticism and vibrant colour. I've read descriptions of her work as Blakean, although it's sometimes used less as praise than as a sneer at supposed "mystical tosh" (to quote one art critic). As with Blake's work, her artistic legacy illustrates the sheer breadth and depth of an imagination fired by both the occult quest for meaning and the Surrealist spirit of revolt.

i The most recent, and arguably the best, biography is by Amy Hale, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor Press, 2020).

ii Ithell Colquhoun's Taro is currently available from Fulgur Press as a full 78 card deck, and in book form. For the more limited budget, some of the Taro images are also available as postcards in the Tate shop.

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Philip Kane

Philip Kane (by Grace Sanchez)

Philip Kane is an award-winning poet, author, storyteller and artist, living in the south-eastern corner of England. He is an “Old Craft” practitioner, a supporter of Anti-Capitalist Resistance, and a founding member of the London Surrealist Group. Philip's work has been published and exhibited across Europe, in the Middle East and in the USA. He is a contributor to The Gorgon's Guide to Magical Resistance (Revelore Press, 2022).