When we think of Surrealism, our minds tend to drift toward its European champions. Names like Salvador Dalí surface alongside René Magritte and Giorgio di Chirico. Indeed, the tradition was strong in Spain, France, and Italy; although, it also bears deep roots in Britain. They run from shore to shore and trace back as early as the 17^th century. British Surrealism didn’t so much grow out of its European counterparts as it did evolve from deep-seated native traditions. So, although Surrealism, by such a name, wasn’t brought to the fore here until a decade after the French writer André Breton’s seminal manifesto, it was not new to our island. It had already existed as something of an innate undercurrent to which many were so habituated they didn’t really clock it as a notable ‘movement’. Breton, himself was quick to reference British influences in his manifesto, touching on Gothic literature and the works of Lewis Carrol. In hindsight, the surreal has always been part and parcel of the British psyche.

A shallow dive into Surrealism will reveal that this was not so much a style as it was a state of mind, or a mode of being. The Surrealists are comparable to the Bloomsbury Group in terms of their freewheeling, subversive sensibility, but also insomuch as there was not one unifying medium, aesthetic quality, or subject matter to their work. Rather, they shared an ethos for living, as well as a voracious appetite for the interrogation and disarticulation of norms and boundaries. What Surrealism is, at its core, is an exercise in seeing with the mind’s eye. Perhaps a look at a few of its eminent British acolytes will breathe some colour into exactly how that’s done.

 

Leonora Carrington

 

Leonora Carrington is, in many ways, the British face of Surrealism. It’s an artistic tradition with many strong female voices, which were initially examined in the context of their relationships with male artists, though are now emerging in their own right. Carrington did, after all, fall into the Surrealist slipstream after encountering the work of German artist, Max Ernst. She was instantly taken with this strange universe he conjured on canvas. When the two later met at a dinner party, they hit it off immediately. Romance ensued and they began not only living but also working together, feeding off each other artistically.

The partnership ultimately led to a great deal of turbulence for Carrington. She cut herself off from her family at the age of 20 to run away to France with Ernst. She learned a lot from him, until the Second World War came along and he was imprisoned as an enemy of Germany. Carrington spiralled, winding up in a Spanish mental asylum for some months, which she portrayed as the most difficult period of her life. It was during this time, however, that she met the Mexican diplomat who she would eventually marry, Renato Leduc. The pair absconded to Mexico City, where she would live out the rest of her days producing the art which tells her tale.

 

 

Mexico proved massively inspiring for Carrington, putting her in contact with a world which, in and of itself, has a surrealism about it. There are traces of magic to be found in every corner of the country – at least to those with an eye for it. To a supremely Surrealist mind, the move to mystical Mexico must have elicited a sense of homecoming. It certainly proved fruitful for her, as she became regarded as one of the most celebrated artists in Mexico at the time. She did, however, keep in touch with her British origins, infusing her work with elements of Celtic mythology, for example. Though, aesthetically, there is a strong leaning toward the style of local artists like Remedios Varo, with whom she grew especially close.

We stand to learn a lot from Carrington on the origins and experience of Surrealist art. “There are things that are not sayable” she remarked. “That’s why we have art.” To Carrington, art is about feeling; it has nothing to do with reason. Intellect doesn’t factor in. “It’s a visual world”, as she put it, which elicits emotions and understandings. These are the things for which we often find no phrases.

 

Ithell Colquhoun

 

Ithell Colquhoun was an artist who dove headlong into the surreal, in life and in art. Her paradigm was formed, in part, by peripatetic tendencies, beginning her life in India before moving to the Isle of Wight at age 2. She worked in London for a time before hopping from Paris to the Greek islands, to Corsica, and then Tenerife. Ultimately, she settled in the Cornish town of Lamorna, where she led a rather secluded life. She bought a derelict hut, which she remodelled into something of a home for herself, and named it Vow Cave.

Colquhoun was English by blood but identified deeply with Celtic culture. She was attracted to the magic and mythology of Cornwall, as well as its otherworldly landscape. She was beyond fascinated by the occult, living in something of a Wickerman world. We see a lot of stone circles and natural motifs in her work, establishing a strong connection with the ancient traditions of the British Isles.

 

 

Eventually Colquhoun’s occult interests drove her away from the Surrealist group. Though, if anything, she ventured deeper into its distinctive creative processes. She engaged in automatism as a method of mining the subconscious, a common practice among Surrealists. This approach removed planning from the artistic process, instead relying on spontaneity, intuition, and chance in order to establish an interface with what she viewed as a deep and interconnected knowledge. Colquhoun viewed automatism as akin to generating her own Rorschach cards, which she and, in turn, the viewer could interpret, gaining access to subconscious understandings through this multi-layered methodology. She did this in utter silence, and rather pointedly, willed a portion of her estate to the Noise Abatement Society so as to preserve that liberty for others. Travel out to Lamorna and perhaps you’ll encounter a pocket of these pure and peaceful creative conditions today.

 

Paul Nash

 

Paul Nash was something of a forerunner for the Surrealist movement. He began engaging in it more intentionally later in his career, though even his early works carried potent elements of the uncanny. He’s remembered as one of Britain’s leading landscape painters of the 20^th century, as well as a prolific war artist. It’s true that these were two key themes in his work, though his wider legacy towers over them as a major influence on British Modernism at large.

 

 

Nash felt compelled to move with the times. He wanted to retain his Britishness, as he saw it, with a thread of romanticism running through his work. Though, he was also drawn to explore Modern movements, like Surrealism. He did so by bringing together seemingly antithetical themes, which was a key practice within the Surrealist tradition. This custom of finding harmony in dichotomy brought forces together like the conscious and subconscious or waking and dreaming. Throughout his work as an Official War Artist, Nash managed to conjure a sense of life in the midst of death. His first explicitly Surrealist painting, ‘Harbour and Room’ shows his knack for connecting the ostensibly oppositional. He paints his view within a French hotel room that sat by Toulon’s harbour. On one wall was a large mirror which reflected the naval ships outside, creating the vague illusion that they were, in fact, sailing straight into his room, bringing the exterior crashing into the interior. And so, he reframed these ordinary elements into something that felt bewilderingly strange and new. Ultimately, he did the same with the British landscape, recasting the familiar in Modernist terms.

 

Sir Roland Penrose

 

These artists shared a common sensibility, by all accounts. Though, they also shared a common patron in Roland Penrose. Penrose started out as a practicing artist, himself, before he became more acquainted with the Surrealists. This inspired a shift toward collecting and curating their work. He felt he couldn’t rival these great artists in terms of technical skill (whether that was true or not), so decided to promote them along with the Surrealist ethos instead. Ultimately, in making this sacrifice he did an immense service to British art.

 

 

Penrose was married to the American, Lee Miller. She was known first as a fashion model and posthumously, as a celebrated photographer, war correspondent, and Surrealist. The pair lived together at Farleys House in East Sussex, which became a meeting place for an international cast of Surrealists (and is now open to the public). In 1936 Penrose gathered the troops and organised the first exhibition of Surrealism in Britain with help from Henry Moore, who had also fallen in with the set. Penrose then established the London Gallery in 1937, which allowed him to bring Britain’s Surrealist art to an even wider audience.

Although he moved away from painting, Penrose was, in every sense of the term, a Surrealist. He reflects the movement’s nature as an approach to life and a way of seeing the world. As a group, the Surrealists challenged the norms of the bourgeois society which they all sought so ardently to escape. Their cast of women trailblazers helped to shift the cultural focus towards a female point of view, centring the formidable women of mythology and art history, like Artemisia Gentileschi. Together they wailed against the strait-laced rationalism of their age, proposing a new alternative. If Surrealism says any one thing, it suggests we abandon our inclination to intellectualise the unintelligible. Instead, we should open ourselves completely to taking it at face value, accepting and relishing life’s true nature as nonsensical, contradictory, and often, ineffably beautiful.

 

 

 

Text by Annabel Colterjohn