Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) was a pioneering British Surrealist artist, writer, and practicing occultist who spent much of her life exploring the intersections of art and magic. Though she died in relative obscurity, her work has seen a massive resurgence, culminating in the major 2025 retrospective exhibition, Between Worlds, at Tate St Ives and Tate Britain.
Colquhoun was a member of the British Surrealist Group in the late 1930s but was famously expelled in 1940 because she refused to renounce her membership in occult organisations like the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Fellowship of Isis. For Colquhoun, surrealism and the occult were inseparable; she used "automatism" - a surrealist technique for bypassing conscious thought - as a form of divination and spiritual practice.
Ithell Colquhoun by Emma Sharples is number 12 in the Modern Women Artists series of mini-monographs about brilliant women artists. Find out more and start collecting the series here.
