Born in Argentina to a Scottish father and American mother, Eileen Agar was sent to England as a child to further her education. Despite her parents’ focus on academia, Agar’s interest in art and creative talent shone, having been encouraged by RA artist and tutor Lucy Kemp-Welch to pursue art. Against her parents’ wishes, she enrolled briefly at the Byam Shaw School of Art before moving to the Leon Underwood School of Painting and Sculpture and later the reputable Slade School of Art, where she studied with Henry Moore, Paul Nash and Gertrude Hermes. It was here that her early works showed influences from Cubism and Abstraction and she began to build a reputation as an artist.
Her independent nature gave Agar a drive and freedom to experiment within in her practice. She travelled to Paris, studying under Cubist artist Frantisek Foltyn and began to create works which challenged wartime male-focussed militarism, a theme which she identified as ‘womb magic’. This went against the typical stereotypes of women, focussing on creation within nature: blending animal and human into dreamlike scenes.
By the mid-1930s, Surrealism began emerging onto the British art scene. In 1936, two major Surrealist drivers, Roland Penrose and David Gasgoyne held the large-scale International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Gallery. Agar was one of the only women artists to be selected in the show, though at the time did not feel so closely aligned with the movement. She claimed, ‘One day I was an artist exploring highly personal combinations of form and content, and the next I was calmly informed I was a Surrealist!’ (Agar quoted in autobiography, Look at My Life).
As time passed, Agar’s relationship with Paul Nash grew, becoming romantically involved until 1944. Inspired by Nash, she began to incorporate found objects in her artwork further developing painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, fashion and photography with themes of organic form (particularly the sea and marine life) imbued with psychological and mystical subject matter. Throughout her life, Agar had little interest in self-promotion and was surprised by her appointment of Royal Academician in 1990, one year prior to her death.
Agar has since become a central figure for forward-thinking, female artists in British art. Her works have been subject of major exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2021, which has in turn, dramatically driven interest in her works in the secondary market.