In London, the prodigious and unforgettable images of the painter Ithell Colquhoun

When Ithell Colquhoun died in 1988 at the age of 81, her disappearance went unnoticed. This summer, Tate Britain is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to her in London, which was first presented at Tate St Ives in Cornwall, where the artist spent much of her life. The recognition is as visible as it is belated. In France, where the artist was also little known, she is just beginning her career: a few paintings in the exhibitions "Surrealism in the Feminine?" at the Musée de Montmartre in 2023, and in "Surrealism" at the Centre Pompidou in 2024. These should be the harbingers of a larger-scale French exhibition.

From the Tate Britain, one emerges with the conviction that few of her contemporaries have shown such consistency, resolution, and audacity in their research. Colquhoun is less concerned with being understood than with following her thoughts and questions to the end. From the late 1920s onward, she dared to paint and exhibit works that accepted neither the usual rules of decency nor the ordinary principles of rationality – and this while her situation as a female artist could obviously only earn her increased disapproval. One of her most transgressive paintings borrows its title from ancient mythology: Scylla , from her " Mediterranean" series, in 1938.

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