Ithell Colquhoun, Gorgon, 1946, Private Collection © Spire Healthcare, © Noise Abatement Society, © Samaritans
One of the most radical artists of her generation, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was an important, but often overlooked figure in British Surrealism. Debuting at Tate St Ives in February 2025, and Tate Britain from June, this landmark exhibition will be the largest of Colquhoun’s work ever staged, featuring over 170 artworks and pieces of archival material including painting, drawing and writing; many of which have never been publicly exhibited. The exhibition will draw on Tate’s significant archive of the artist’s work, tracing Colquhoun’s evolution from her early work and engagement with the surrealist movement, to her fascination with the intertwining realms of art, sexual identity, ecology, magic and mysticism.
Following a loosely chronological path, the exhibition will map the influence of esoteric and surrealist concepts on the artist’s developing practice from the mid-1920s to the 1980s. Early paintings from her time at the Slade School of Fine Art will be presented, including Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes 1929, in which Colquhoun combines biblical subjects with subversive occultist elements, challenging social convention to express her own beliefs. Tate St Ives will present costume designs for the play The Bird of Hermes c. 1926, the first direct reference to occultist concepts in her practice, which communicated these ideas to a wider public.
The exhibition will explore Colquhoun’s visual and conceptual engagement with Surrealism in the 1930s and 40s. Botanical works such as Water-Flower 1938 will emphasise her evolving vision and interest in the uncanny. Colquhoun also became increasingly focused on representations of the human body through the surrealist ‘double image’ during this period, exemplified in Scylla (méditerranée) 1938, one of her most celebrated works, which merges the female form with the natural landscape. The exhibition will also offer the first chance to see Colquhoun’s storyboard for an unmade surrealist film titled Bonsoir 1939 in its entirety.
A turning point came in 1939 when she met Gordon Onslow Ford and Roberto Matta, who were using surrealist automatist techniques to create imagery through chance rather than conscious control, intended to mine both the human psyche and other metaphysical realms. This approach became central to the evolution of Colquhoun’s intertwining artistic and occultist practice during the early 1940s when she moved away from traditional painting techniques. Her influential essay The Mantic Stain,1949 explored the spiritual possibilities of automatism, and the exhibition will present a group of paintings made using the decalcomania technique, involving the pressing together of two surfaces covered with paint to create a mirror image produced without the intentional use of the artist’s hand. Works such as Attributes of the Moon 1947 and Gorgon 1946 will emphasise her preoccupation with channelling the spirit world and will be paired with their counterpart transfer papers for the first time to demonstrate Colquhoun’s process.
Colquhoun’s immersion in occultism developed increasingly into the 1940s, embracing ancient philosophical principles including alchemy, paganism, animism and mysticism, coupled with her individual ideas about gender fluidity and interest in harnessing a divine feminine power. Created for her own spiritual progression as well as for public display, her works in this period are full of magical symbolism, flowing energy channels and portals to extra dimensions through spatial diagrams called tesseracts. Other groups of works, such as a series entitled The Diagrams of Love 1940-2 reflect kabbalistic, tantric and alchemical ideas, portraying the merging of male and female forms to create an androgynous whole.
Colquhoun’s understanding of the world as a connected spiritual cosmos brought her to Cornwall from the early 1940s, where she deepened her creative explorations inspired by the region’s ancient landscape, Celtic mythologies, and neolithic monuments. Spending time between London and West Penwith, she acquired a studio in Lamorna in 1949 before settling in Paul. She published extensively: essays, Surrealist novels and atmospheric travelogues including The Living Stones: Cornwall in 1957. Colquhoun’s fascination with the mystic charge of Celtic lands will be foregrounded by visionary works of sacred sites and standing stone configurations in Cornwall, Ireland and Brittany such as Dance of the Nine Opals 1942, brought together in the exhibition for the first time.
The exhibition will culminate with a section showcasing Colquhoun’s enamel drip techniques which the artist created during the final years of her life. This will include designs for a set of ‘Taro’ cards, an innovative series often considered the finest synthesis of Colquhoun’s art and magical practice, in which she departed from figuration altogether.