Ithell Colquhoun

Ithell Colquhoun ( 9 October 1906 – 11 April 1988) was a British painter, occultist, poet and author.

Stylistically her artwork was affiliated with surrealism.

Colquhoun studied from 1925 at Cheltenham School of Art, and at Slade School of Art in London from October 1927, where she was taught by Henry Tonks and Randolph Schwabe.

In 1929, Colquhoun received the Slade's Summer Composition Prize for her painting Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes, and in 1931 it was exhibited in the Royal Academy.

Despite her studies at the Slade, Colquhoun was primarily a self-taught artist.

In the late 1930s, Colquhoun was part of the British Surrealist Group before being expelled because she refused to renounce her association with occult groups.

Colquhoun was born in Shillong, Eastern Bengal and Assam, British India, but brought up in the United Kingdom.

After studying at the Slade School of Art, she lived briefly in Paris before moving back to London.

While at the Slade, she joined G.R.S. Mead's Quest Society, and in 1930 published her first article, "The Prose of Alchemy", in the society's journal.

She established a studio in Paris, where she first encountered surrealism, reading Peter Neagoe's essay What is Surrealism? During the 1930s she also spent time in Greece, Corsica, and Tenerife.

While in Greece, Colquhoun met and became infatuated with a woman, Andromache "Kyria" Kazou, who was the subject of several drawings and paintings and an unpublished manuscript, "Lesbian Shore".

Kazou appears to have visited Colquhoun in Paris, and Colquhoun later invited her to move to London so they could live together, though Kazou never did so.

After leaving the Slade in 1931, Colquhoun spent several years traveling.

Colquhoun exhibited three paintings in Paris in 1933, and one work at the Royal Society of Scotland in 1934.

In 1936, she had her first solo exhibition at the Cheltenham Art Gallery, where she showed 91 works.

A solo exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London followed in the same year.

Colquhoun's interest in surrealism deepened after seeing Salvador Dalí lecture at the 1936 International Exhibition of Surrealism in London.

In 1937 she joined the Artists' International Association, and in the late 1930s she became increasingly associated with the surrealist movement in Britain, publishing in the London Bulletin in 1938 and 1939, visiting André Breton in Paris in 1939, and joining the British Surrealist Group in the same year.

Also in 1939, she exhibited with Roland Penrose at the Mayor Gallery, showing 14 oil paintings and two objects.

After only a year as a member of the British Surrealist Group, Colquhoun was expelled in 1940, due to her refusal to comply with E.L.T. Mesens' demands that the surrealists should not be members of any other groups, which Colquhoun felt would interfere with her studies of occultism.

This led to Colquhoun's exclusion from other exhibitions organised by the British surrealists, but she continued to work with surrealist principles.

In the 1940s, Colquhoun met and began a relationship with the Russian-born Italian artist and critic Toni del Renzio.

Though he criticised her art as "sterile abstractions" in an essay in his magazine Arson in March 1942, he soon moved in with her, and in December that year she exhibited at a show at the International Art Centre, London, organised by del Renzio.

They married in 1943.

According to Eric Ratcliffe, their studio in Bedford Park, London, became an open house for friends, other artists and like-minded individuals.

From 1945, Colquhoun lived and worked in Parkhill Road, Hampstead.

Colquhoun began to visit Cornwall during the Second World War.

The marriage later became unhappy and they divorced – "acrimoniously", according to Matthew Gale – in 1947.

From 1947, she rented a studio near Penzance, and divided her time between there and London; in 1959 she moved to Paul, Cornwall.

She remained in Cornwall for the rest of her life.

She had solo exhibitions in 1947 at the Mayor Gallery, in 1972 at Exeter Museum and Art Gallery, and in 1976 at the Newlyn Orion Gallery.

After her move to Cornwall, Colquhoun increasingly focused on publishing her writing, and from the 1960s her output of visual art substantially declined in favour of her writing and her occult activities.

Colquhoun continued producing art until around 1983.

She spent the latter part of her life in Cornwall, where she died in 1988.

Margaret Ithell Colquhoun was born in Shillong, Eastern Bengal and Assam, British India, the daughter of Henry Archibald Colebrooke Colquhoun and Georgia Frances Ithell Manley.

Colquhoun was educated in Rodwell, near Weymouth, Dorset, before attending Cheltenham Ladies' College.

She became interested in occultism aged 17, after reading about Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema.

She spent her final years in a care-home in Lamorna, and died in 1988.

She left her literary works to a friend, Derek Stanford, her occult work to the Tate, and the remainder of her art to the National Trust.

The copyright for the works she sold or gifted during her lifetime was left to The Samaritans, the Noise Abatement Society, and the Sister Perpetua Wing of St Anthony's Hospital, North Cheam.