Ithell Colquhoun

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Head , 1931 (self-portrait)

Ithell Colquhoun (born October 9, 1906 in Shillong , † April 11, 1988 in Lamorna ) was a British artist , poet , writer and practicing alchemist . Colquhoun is considered an important representative of surrealism .

Life

Ithell Colquhoun was born in Shillong, British India, attended Cheltenham Ladies College and studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

She toured France to study Salvador Dali's work, attended the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and had numerous exhibitions in England and Germany. In 1940 she was expelled from the Surrealist Association by ELT Mesens for her occult studies .

Colquhoun spent a lot of time in Cornwall from the 1940s onwards , where she finally settled in 1959. She felt closely connected to the Cornish landscape, which she expressed in numerous pictures, poems and her book The Living Stones: Cornwall (1957).

Ithell Colquon was involved in various mystical Rosicrucian communities and combined the techniques learned there with her artistic work. Many of her pictures were created with Décalcomanie , the technique of "automatic painting" as an equivalent to automatic writing , as it is e.g. B. was used by WB Yeats . Similar to Yeats, Colquhoun wanted to achieve the connection between her mystical and her artistic work in this way. She has published numerous articles on alchemical and occult subjects and authored a book on SL MacGregor Mathers , the founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn . She signed her later pictures with the monogram of her religious name Soror Splendidior Vitro .

As her last major work, she designed a set of 78 pictures in 1977, which represent a kind of abstract surrealist translation of the Waite Tarot .

On April 11, 1988, Ithell Colquhoun died of heart failure at the Menwinnion Country House Hotel in Lamorna, Cornwall.

plant

Song of Songs 1933

Colquhoun's works can be found in London in the British Museum , the National Portrait Gallery (London) and the Tate Gallery , as well as in the Royal Cornwall Museum , Truro and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

At first Colquhoun worked with the double image technique made famous by Dali, an example of this would be the picture “Scylla” linked below, which is located in the Tate Gallery today, from 1939 she experimented with décalcomanie and other “automatic” painting techniques. With this technique she produced, among other things, the series of 78 tarot card images.

bibliography

  • The Prose of Alchemy. The Quest. Vol 21 (3) April 1930 pp 294-303.
  • Salvo for Russia, 1942 (contribution)
  • The Fortune Anthology, 1942 (contribution)
  • The Living Stones Cornwall, 1957
  • The Two Silurists. Prediction, Vol. 37, No July 7, 1971. pp 22-24. Thomas Vaughan, the alchemist, and his brother.
  • The Taro as Color. Sangreal, 1978, Vol 1. No. 2 pp 31-33. Reprint of an essay written to accompany an exhibition at the Newlyn Art Gallery in 1977.
  • Notes on the Coloring of the Homer's Golden Chain Diagram. Hermetic Journal, 1979. no 6 pp 15-17.
  • The Rosie Crucian Secrets: Their Excellent Method of Making Medicines of Metals Also Their Lawes and Mysteries, 1985 (Introduction)
  • Ithell Colquhoun: Sword of Wisdom, MacGregor Mathers and the "Golden Dawn" . Kersken-Canbaz, Bergen 1996, ISBN 3-89423-030-4 .
  • Goose of Hermogenes, 2003, ISBN 978-0720611779
  • The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun, 2007 (edited by Steve Nichols), ISBN 978-1847531629

literature

  • Eric Ratcliff: Ithell Colquhoun-Pioneer Surrealist Artist, Occultist, Writer, and Poet . Mandrake, Oxford, 2007, ISBN 978-1869928988
  • Richard Shillito: Ithell Colquhoun-Magician Born of Nature. lulu, 2010, ISBN 978-1445244464

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ithell Colquhoun - Chronology ( Memento of the original of April 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ithellcolquhoun.co.uk
  2. ^ Occult Surrealist - Ithell Colquhoun and automatism
  3. ^ Ithell Colquhoun - biography
  4. ^ The Artwork of Modern Tarot Project
  5. ↑ Ithell Colquhoun - Public Collections ( Memento of the original from January 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ithellcolquhoun.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Colquhoun, Ithell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Soror Splendidior Vitro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter, poet and alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Shillong
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1988
Place of death Lamorna