Eileen Agar

signed Agar (lower right)
ink on velvet silk 
31.7 by 22.2cm.; 12 1/2 by 8 3/4in.
Executed in 1942.

Galaozzi-La Placa Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above 

London, Birch & Conran, Eileen Agar: A Retrospective, 1987, no. 52
Berkeley, University Art Museum, Anxious Visions Surrealist Art, 1990, no. 6

This work is in very good condition. Executed on velvet and silk fabrics laid down on a thin canvas, stretched on a small rectangular wooden stretcher. It should be conserved under glass. There is a thin strip of canvas stitched along the right edge of the original fabric to allow it to be stretched properly. There is a minor hole in the fabric to the lower right of the signature, another to the lower center and some further smaller holes along the left edge.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Executed in 1942, Woman’s Head is indicative of Agar’s adaptation and manipulation of the Surrealist aesthetic with which she surrounded herself. After graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1926, Agar moved to Paris where she soon struck up a friendship with the Surrealist protagonists André Breton and Paul Éluard. Her collaboration with Paul Nash led him to recommend her work to Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, organizers of the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibitionat the New Burlington Galleries in London, making Agar the only female British artist included in the show. By 1940 her works had been shown in Surrealist exhibitions in Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Tokyo.

Agar explained her works as conveying “the interpenetration of reason and unreason” by creating connections among seemingly disparate forms. In true Surrealist fashion, Agar reveals a double reality in Woman’s Head by showing the unconscious mind at work on the exterior of the figure. In Woman’s Head the downward swooping lines and yellow pigment used to depict the profile contradict the systematically placed horizontal curvatures extending across the rest of the figure and into the background, demonstrating Agar’s enjoyment in fluidly mutating one shape into another.