Eileen Forrester Agar

About

Eileen Agar was an Argentine-British painter and photographer closely associated with the Surrealist movement. Born in Buenos Aires to a wealthy family, she was sent to England at age six for schooling at Heathfield before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she trained in traditional figurative painting. In 1929, she traveled to Paris, immersing herself in avant-garde circles, studying with Frantisek Foltyn, and encountering Cubism, Constantin Brâncuși, and Surrealists like André Breton and Paul Éluard. Her work shifted toward abstraction and the subconscious, with early pieces like Three Symbols (1930) marking her surrealist turn. She settled in London with partner Joseph Bard, holding her first solo exhibition and gaining prominence as the only British woman in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition.

Surrealism with abstract and organic forms inspired by nature, the subconscious, and found objects