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Ithell Colquhoun (1906 - 1988)

Roman Sun, 1947

The present work carries an intriguing, enigmatic air. The tropical feel of the palm trees, the ornamental aspect of the foreground and the blazing sun belie a more fundamental, underlying essence – one of untethered energy indecipherable through the jungle of towering, interlocking blocks that populate the background. The maze-like nature of these blocks brings a subtle, enclosing feel of uncertainty and claustrophobia that is relieved as it opens up above the flattened rooftops and in front of the portal-like entrance.

The massive blocks and the flights of steps, in an environment very clearly of human design and construction yet seemingly bereft of ongoing habitation, feature regularly in Colquhoun’s work of the late 1930s and ’40s. Whilst largely naturalistic in the application of paint, there are passages of decalcomania to the plantation: the leaves of the palm trees, the shrubbery at their feet and the centre-piece of the courtyard addressed directly by one of several piercing shafts of energy emitted from the sun. The technique, closely associated with Surrealist automatism and more prominent in Colquhoun’s Painting (see lot 14), involves transferring paint from a sheet pressed against the surface to give a ribbed aesthetic. Here, the effect is of a veiny, skeletal structure underpinning the vegetation – imagined, larger scale reflections of the more naturally occurring feature that Colquhoun so delighted in emphasising for it’s inherently surreal qualities in botanical works such as Anthurium (1936).

Colquhoun’s engagement with the occult, and with polytheistic and nontheistic belief systems, took on new impetus in the decade leading up to this work. Roman Sun is imbued with a mystical sense of this spirituality; the sun itself is deified as it sears the sky and radiates majestically across the composition. In this sense, the work combines some of Colquhoun’s most prominent preoccupations and stylistic techniques of this period with a somewhat more Realist element than in her abstract work exemplified by the previous lot – perhaps a more sincere expression of Colquhoun’s wider frame of thinking beyond the realm of purely artistic experimentation.

We are grateful to Dr Richard Shillitoe for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

H78.2cm
x W50.4cm
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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