A New Exhibition Brings Fresh Recognition to a Groundbreaking But Largely Forgotten Surrealist
At London’s Tate Britain, a major retrospective takes a long look at the work of Ithell Colquhoun
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British artist and writer Ithell Colquhoun was a pioneer of Surrealist “automatism,” creating images from charcoal shavings or letting her unconscious take charge of a pen. Such methods had a “divinatory power,” she explained, comparing them to “the practices of clairvoyants who use … tea leaves and coffee grounds to set in motion their telepathic faculty.” While she traveled in the same circles as household names like Salvador Dalí, Colquhoun broke with Surrealism in 1940 to focus on the occult, a move that may have contributed to her relative obscurity by the time of her death in 1988.
This month, however, a major retrospective of Colquhoun’s work will open at London’s Tate Britain, after a stint at the museum’s Cornwall branch. It’s the first since her rediscovery by a new generation of artists drawn to her explorations of women’s sexuality, spirituality and the natural world. “Over the years I have followed the path blazed by Colquhoun,” writes the British artist Linder Sterling, in an essay about the show, and felt “her encouragement from beyond the grave.”
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This article is a selection from the June 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine
Editors’ note, May 20, 2025: This article has been updated to reflect the artist’s professional name.
