1. Eileen Forrester Agar was an Argentine-British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement.
24 Facts About Eileen Agar
1. 2.
Eileen Agar's father was the head of a family business selling windmills and agricultural machinery to Argentina.
3.
At a young age, Eileen Agar became fascinated by pictures by Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham.
4.
Eileen Agar describes her childhood as being "full of balloons, hoops and St Bernard dogs".
5.
Aged six, Eileen Agar was sent to England to a private school in Canford Cliffs.
6.
In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Eileen Agar was sent away to Tudor Hall, then in Kent, to avoid the hardships of war.
7.
Eileen Agar found the Byam Shaw too academic and pleaded with her family to allow her to look elsewhere to continue her schooling.
8.
That infuriated her mother and, after an argument with her parents, Eileen Agar noted in her diary that she got up early, ate lunch with her sisters, packed her bags, and departed from Paddington station.
9.
Eileen Agar left a note for her parents stating that she was on her way to Truro and St Mawes, where she would stay with family friends, the De Kays.
10.
From 1920 to 1921, Eileen Agar studied under Leon Underwood at his school at Brook Green.
11.
Eileen Agar resisted the wealthy lifestyle she was privy to and pointedly refused to make use of the Rolls-Royce her parents sent to pick her up from the Slade each day.
12.
Eileen Agar described Bartlett as "the escape-hatch which freed me from the clutches of my family".
13.
In 1926, Eileen Agar met a Hungarian, Joseph Bard, with whom she would spend the next 50 years, and whose passion for jewels she would integrate into her artistic practice.
14.
In 1930, Eileen Agar returned to England, and painted her first surrealist piece, The Flying Pillar, based on Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.
15.
Eileen Agar describes her piece in her memoir as her "first attempt at an imaginative approach to painting and although the result was surreal, it was not done with that intention".
16.
Eileen Agar said that "Surrealism was in the air in France and poets in France, later in England, were kissing that sleeping beauty troubled by nightmares, and it was the kiss of life that they gave".
17.
Eileen Agar was a member of the London Group from 1934 onwards, and made her first collage in the same year.
18.
Eileen Agar was one of few women included in the exhibition.
19.
Eileen Agar started to experiment with automatic techniques and new materials, taking photographs and making collages and objects.
20.
Eileen Agar created two versions of The Angel of Anarchy after the first version was lost on its way back from a show in Amsterdam.
21.
Eileen Agar made her second version in 1940, using the same cast of Joseph Bard's head, and kept the original title.
22.
Eileen Agar visited Picasso and Dora Maar's home in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes, along with Lee Miller, who photographed her.
23.
In 1990, Eileen Agar was elected as a Royal Academy Associate.
24.
Eileen Agar is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, in grave No 17606.