5 days ago
The remarkable and unforgettable images of painter Ithell Colquhoun, on display in London
When Ithell Colquhoun passed away in 1988 at the age of 81, her death went unnoticed. This summer, Tate Britain is giving her a comprehensive retrospective in London, following its initial presentation at Tate St Ives in Cornwall, where the artist spent much of her life. This recognition is as overdue as it is well-deserved. In France, where she is not very well known, her reputation is just starting to grow. A few of her works appeared in the "Feminine Surrealism?" exhibition at the Montmartre Museum in 2023 and in the "Surrealism" exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2024. These exhibitions may be the first signs of a larger French exhibition to come.
After visiting Tate Britain, one leaves convinced that few of Colquhoun's contemporaries demonstrated as much consistency, determination and boldness in their artistic explorations. Colquhoun cared more about exploring her thoughts and questions to their limits than about being understood. As early as the late 1920s, she dared to paint and exhibit works that rejected conventional rules of decency and ordinary principles of rationality – even though, as a woman artist, she inevitably faced additional disapproval. One of her most transgressive paintings takes its title from ancient mythology: 1938's Scylla, from her Méditerranée series.
