Eileen Agar was amused to be annexed into the surrealist movement. Although her career prospered under the surrealist umbrella, her work owes as much to cubism and abstraction and as such straddles the major developments of the first thirty years of the twentieth century.

Often pigeon-holed as a surrealist, Eileen Agar (I899-I99I) was in fact a highly original and independent imaginative artist. Working within the tradition of English romantic painting, she made a unique contribution to the art of her times. The lyrical resonance and inventive breadth of her work is only now beginning to be properly recognized, and this book is the first to draw upon previously unpublished research.The writer and critic Andrew Lambirth, who knew Agar well, has written an in-depth study of her work as it developed over seven decades. Focusing on the use of collage which was central to her practice, Lambirth examines key examples from the different periods of her career. Not only does this book illustrate many previously unknown works, but it unveils an unusual depth of insight into the subject. Writing with the authority of long collaboration with the artist, Lambirth is able to reveal many details of her thought and artistic methods. Agar emerges as an artist overdue for re-assessment,capable of holding her own beside such contemporaries as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland.

Director's Foreword

Curator's Acknowledgements

Preface

A Note on the Selection

The Barbaric Jewels of Eileen Agar

Early Years

The 1930s

A Key Decade

The 1940s

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

Bibliography

Chronology

Selected Exhibitions

Photographic Credits