Portrait 

Eileen Agar made this watercolour portrait in England. The lack of information about its creation date is in itself an interesting piece of information. It invites us to ponder the place of women artists in the art-historical record. Agar was associated with the British Surrealist movement, which embraced the irrational and the unconscious. Here, we see a face, but it is abstracted and fragmented through a palette of cool blues and greys. Look at the shape of the head, which is cut out from the paper, setting it apart from traditional portraiture. The face has been reduced to a set of overlapping shapes and textures, almost like collage. During the interwar years, avant-garde artists rejected the art establishment, by breaking away from its values and institutions, and the politics of Surrealism certainly challenged existing social norms. To understand the piece better, researchers might explore exhibition catalogues and Agar’s writings to gain a deeper understanding of her artistic intentions and the cultural context in which this "Portrait" was made.