L'Helice

Details

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988)
L'Helice
signed and dated 'Colquhoun/39' (lower right), signed again, inscribed and dated again 'ITHELL COLQUHOUN 1939 L'HELICE/(MEDITERRANÉE)' (on the canvas-overlap)
tempera on canvas
22 x 22 in. (56 x 56 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 8 March 1995, lot 275.

Exhibited

London, London Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun, June 1939, catalogue not traced.
Northampton, Northampton Gallery, British Surrealist and Abstract Paintings, July - August 1939, no. 6.
Harrogate, Harrogate Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun, 1941, catalogue not traced.
Batley, Batley Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun, 1941, catalogue not traced.
London, Leva Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun: An Exhibition of Surrealist Paintings and Drawings from 1930-1950, October - November 1974, no. 14.
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun, Paintings, Drawings and Collages, February - March 1976, not numbered.
London, Michael Parkin Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun Paintings and Drawings 1930-1940, 1977, no. 21.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This picture belongs to the first period in Ithell Colquhoun's artistic production when, after leaving the Slade, she painted portraits, exotic plants and flowers in the vein of magic realism. Her fascination for elaborate shapes made her touch on the fantastic, a quality hidden in the most ordinary, apparently unpoetical objects, which, in a way, she withdraws from the rational world, giving them a new life. She makes us see in them a kind of irruptiveness, which explains that her own evolution will almost at the same time develop a profound interest in the arcane and esoteric. This painting was exhibited at her one-woman show at the London Gallery in June 1939.

M.R.

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