This is a list of the artworks from our collection currently on display at each Gallery.
Works are moved from view for many different reasons. Although this page is updated regularly, we cannot guarantee that the pieces listed here will be on display when you visit.
Eileen Agar
Fish Circus1939On Display
This work is thought to have been made in the autumn of 1939, after Agar and her husband had spent their summer holiday near Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. Agar had been an avid beachcomber since 1930, composing works from the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore. The collage features a real starfish, pinned on with a thumbtack, together with collaged and drawn elements. The starfish is the pivot of the composition, its shape providing the perfect link between the geometric and organic elements of the collage.
- Accession no. GMA 3938
- Medium Collage, pen and ink and watercolour on paper
- Size 18.50 x 25.00 cm
- Copyright © Estate of Eileen Agar
- Credit Bequeathed by Gabrielle Keiller 1995
- Subjects [4]
- Collage
- Marine life
- Still life
- Surrealism
Eileen Agar (English, 1899 - 1991)
Agar was born in Buenos Aires to a Scottish father and an American mother. She went to school in England and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Rebelling against her privileged upbringing, she left her husband and in 1929 moved to Paris with her lover, the writer Joseph Bard. In the 1930s Agar was a leading British exponent of Surrealism, although she remained distinct from the political and theoretical aspects of the movement. Agar made collages, paintings, objects and photographs and was the only professional British female artist who exhibited at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.
Glossary [2] Show
Collage
An image constructed from found materials, such as photographs, paper or fabric, glued to a surface, sometimes with additional painted or drawn elements. It is an art form particularly associated with Dada and Surrealism.
Composition
The arrangement of different elements in a work of art.