Footnotes

Provenance
With the New Art Centre, London, where acquired by the family of the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

"Life's meaning is lost without the spirit of play."
(Eileen Agar)

Eileen Agar (1899-91) was born in Buenos Aires to a wealthy family but moved to England for her education and in 1921 she joined the Slade School for Art before travelling to Paris at the end of the decade. It was here that she met Max Ernst (1891-1976), Joan Miró (1893-1983), and André Breton (1896-1966), among others and discovered the Surrealist movement, as well as being trained in Cubism. She was drawn by the sensuality and irrationality of Surrealism, as well as the idealism and logic of Cubism but did not subscribe to the radical politics of her European counterparts and disliked how the group behaved towards women.

Stylistically, Phoenix may be dated to circa 1932, a pivotal time of change for the artist and one that set her on her course to later widespread acclaim. The artist commented of this time "I started to show my work, and in 1932 exhibited with the National Society of Painters, Sculptors, Engravers and Potters, at the Royal Institute Galleries in Piccadilly. My first press cuttings are from this show, and I was at once ambitious for more. My work was changing and beginning to assume a more lyrical and imaginative presence of its own. As I grew in confidence I was impatient to have my work seen by a larger public". (Eileen Agar, A Look at My Life, Methuen, London, 1988, p.102). In the present example, this imaginative presence takes the form of the mythological Phoenix, an immortal bird, heavily abstracted and rising triumphantly in an explosion of colour and form.

In 1936, Agar was invited by Herbert Read and Roland Penrose to exhibit work at the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London. The notoriety of the exhibition raised her public profile considerably and, in 1937, she was one of the few artists asked to submit work for the Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.