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Ithell Colquhoun (1906 - 1988)

DREAMING LEAPS: IN HOMAGE TO SONIA ARAQUISTAIN, 1945

Dreaming Leaps was inspired by the life and tragic death of Sonia Araquistain (1922–1945), a 23-year-old artist deeply engaged with dreams, psychoanalysis and Freudian theory. Araquistain took her own life on 3 September 1945, an event that was met with public condemnation, with both the media and authorities criticising her intellectual interests as “unsuitable”. It was this societal backlash that prompted Colquhoun’s artistic response.

The painting exemplifies the Surrealist movement’s commitment to personal freedom and its rejection of restrictive societal norms. Through her tribute to Araquistain, Colquhoun critiques the repressive cultural and institutional forces shaping British life during this period, emphasizing the tension between individual beliefs and societal expectations.

Exhibited:
London, Mayor Gallery, 1947, 5 – 29 March. Exhibition of Paintings by Ithell Colquhoun. no.
8; Bradford, Cartwright Hall, 1949. 25 March – ? Spring Exhibition. A catalogue is not known, but Dreaming Leaps has been identified from newspaper reviews; Cambridge, Heffer Gallery, 1953, 20 April – 9 May. Ithell Colquhoun. Paintings and Drawings 1942-1953. no. 8.; Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, 1961, 2 – 27 October. Ithell Colquhoun: Retrospective Exhibition of Oil Paintings. no. 6; Exeter, City Art Gallery, 1972, Museum and Art Gallery. 26 Sept.– 21 October. Ithell
Colquhoun: Paintings, Collages and Drawings. no. 6.; Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, 1976, 27 Feb. – 23 March. Ithell Colquhoun: Surrealism, Paintings, Drawings, Collages 1936-76. no. 16; Canterbury, The Herbert Read Gallery, 1986, 19 – 31 May. Surrealism in England 1936, exhibition later travelled to Cardiff and Newcastle. no. 87, as ca. 1946; Leeds, City Art Gallery, 1986, 10 Oct. – 7 December. Angels of Anarchy and Machines for Making Clouds. Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties. no. 29, ill. col. Tate St. Ives, Ithell Colquhoun, Between Worlds, 1 February – 5th May, 2025.

Literature:
Colquhoun, 1981, Women in Art. Oxford Art Journal, 4 (1) p. 65. (A letter responding to an article by Dawn Ades); Schwartz, A. 1989. I Surrealist. Milan: Mazzotta. ill. col. p. 464; Remy, 1999, Surrealism in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate. ill. col. pl. 140, discussed pp. 240-1; Ratcliffe, 2007, Ithell Colquhoun. Oxford: Mandrake. ill. col. pl. 44. Tate St. Ives, Ithell Colquhoun, Between Worlds (2025).

H80 cm
x W55cm
Signed and dated
Colquhoun, Ithell

Ithell Colquhoun (1906 - 1988)

Ithell Colquhoun studied at Cheltenham Art School (1925 - 7) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1927 - 31), winning joint first prize in the 1929 Summer Composition Competition. After discovering Surrealism in Paris in 1932, she held her first solo exhibition at Cheltenham Art Gallery in 1936 and in 1939 joined the British Surrealist Group, showing alongside Roland Penrose at the Mayor Gallery that June. She was particularly interested in automatic painting and how it could unlock not just the unconscious mind but also the mystical. Despite her expulsion from the British Surrealist Group in 1940 due to her increasing preoccupation with the occult, Colquhoun remained active in Surrealist circles; she was married to Toni del Renzio from 1943 - 48. She wrote and illustrated numerous books, including The Living Stones: Cornwall (1957), and exhibited in London at the Leicester Galleries and with the London Group, as well as in Regional galleries and abroad. She took part in several Surrealist retrospectives in the 1970s, including a solo show at the Newlyn Gallery in 1976, and the terms of her will bequeathed her studio (over 3000 works) to the National Trust, which in 2019 was transferred to Tate.

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Colquhoun, Ithell (1906 - 1988)

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