WORK OF THE WEEK I Eileen Agar, Triumph of the Tree Trunk, 1944

Eileen Agar
Triumph of the Tree Trunk, 1944
Gouache on paper
Signed lower centre 'Agar'
25.5 x 33 ¾ cm
10 x 1ft 1 ¾ in.

£ 2,000

This week we are celebrating Eileen Agar's 125th Birthday.

Nature was a starting point for Eileen Agar's imaginative and dreamlike works. Throughout her life, Agar lived between London, Paris and Portofino, and often spent hours walking and beachcombing in the surrounding countryside. She collected shells, leaves and flowers, which when taken back to her London studio were transformed into paintings with overlapping patterns, blocks of colour and collaged forms. Agar’s painting, Triumph of the Tree Trunk (1944), exhibits this process of translating the natural world around her.

An important figure in the British Surrealist movement, Eileen Agar RA was born in Argentina in 1899. Her family returned to Britain in 1911, and settled in London, where she went on to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art in 1921, under Leon Underwood. Following this, Agar studied at the Slade School of Art, London, from 1925 – 1926. In 1936, thanks to her inclusion in the famous London International Surrealist exhibition, she was considered an acclaimed Surrealist, with contemporaries like Gertrude Hermes, Paul Nash and André Breton. Eileen Agar has exhibited internationally, with notable solo exhibitions at the Berardo Museum, Lisbon, Portugal; Mjellby Konstmuseum, Halmstad, Sweden and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA. In 1971, The Commonwealth Institute staged a retrospective exhibition for Agar, and in 1988 she was elected a Royal Academician.

The New Art Centre has exhibited Eileen Agar’s work for many years. Her first exhibition with the gallery on Sloane Street, Works on Paper 1938 – 1975: Eileen Agar (1975), was followed by 5 further solo shows until her death in 1991. Her work continues to be immensely popular today, with recent exhibitions including Eileen Agar: A Look at My Life, The Redfern Gallery, London (2024) and Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2021).

Eileen Agar’s work is included in numerous public collections, including at the Tate, London; the Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire; the Arts Council Collection, UK and the Government Art Collection, UK.

This work is sold with its original frame.