Eileen Agar was born on 1 December 1899 at Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her father James Agar, was a Scottish businessman and her mother an American. The family moved to London in 1911. Eileen was educated at Canford Cliffs, Dorset, Heathfield St Mary’s School, Ascot (where she was taught art by Lucy Kemp-Welsh); Tudor Hall, Chislehurst and Mlle Ozanne’s Finishing School in London. In 1919 she commenced weekly classes at the Byam Shaw School of Art (now part of the University of the Arts, London). In 1924 she studied at Leon Underwood’s Brook Green School of Art. Against her parents wished, she attended the Slade from 1925 to 1926, where she studied under the redoubtable Henry Tonks. She also studied art in Paris in the period 1928-30, where she befriended Picasso, Henry Moore, Man Ray, Evelyn Waugh and Ezra Pound. In 1926 she met the Hungarian writer Joseph Bard, whom she would marry at Gloucester Road Registry Office in February 1940. In 1928, they lived in Paris, where she met and socialised with the Surrealists André Breton and Paul Éluard. A notable beauty, Agar’s well-heeled social circle included Evelyn Waugh, Joan Waugh, Eddie Sackville-West, Eileen and Alec Waugh. In the period 1935-44 she conducted an affair with fellow artist Paul Nash and he introduced her to the concept of the ‘found object’. In 1933 Agar became a member of the London Group and her first solo exhibition was held at the Bloomsbury Gallery that year. Three of her oils and five of her ‘objects’ were chosen by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read for the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, in 1936, where she showed three paintings, as ‘Quadriga’ and five objects. She was the only female artist selected. Agar’s wit and originality is evident from her creation of Surrealist headgear, such as her ‘Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse’. Agar began to experiment with automatic techniques and new materials, taking photographs and making collages and objects. ‘The Angel of Anarchy’ (fabric over plaster and mixed media) is an example from the period 1936-40 and may be found in the collection of the Tate. In 1937, Agar spent time at Picasso and Dora Maar’s home in Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes), with Paul and Nusch Éluard, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller. In 1940 Agar attended Surrealist exhibitions in Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Tokyo. During the Second World War, she worked in a canteen in Savile Row in London. In the immediate post-war years, Agar started painting again but was dissatisfied with the results. In 1947 she contributed to the Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Maeght, Paris and travelled with the PEN Club to Stockholm. In 1948 she appeared on the BBC TV programme ‘The Eye of the Artist’ and also on a programme introduced by James Laver on the subject of ‘Hats’. By the 1960s she was producing Tachist paintings with Surrealist elements. In 1971 she was given a Retrospective exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London. Throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s she had an almost non-stop series of solo exhibitions, mostly in London. In 1975 Joseph Bard died after a period of ill-health. In 1977 Agar appeared with George Melly, Roland Penrose, Conroy Maddox and Robert Melville in a TV reconstruction of a Barcelona Restaurant meeting of the British Surrealists. In 1983 she appeared in an ‘Omnibus’ TV programme about her career, presented by Richard Baker. In 1988 her autobiography A Look at my Life was published. Agar died in London on 17 November 1991. In October 2008 Andrew Lambirth curated an exhibition of Agar’s work at the Pallant House Gallery at Chichester in West Sussex. Agar’s Textiles over plaster and mixed media object Angel of Anarchy may be found in the collection of the Tate. The blindfolded head was loosely based on an earlier painted plaster head. Agar stated that with this new work she wanted to create something ‘totally different, more astonishing, powerful … more malign’. It suggests the foreboding and uncertainty that she felt about the future in the late 1930s. Believing that women are the true Surrealists, Agar wrote: ‘the importance of the unconscious in all forms of Literature and Art establishes the dominance of a feminine type of imagination over the classical and more masculine order.’ Her remarkable acrylic on canvas Figures in a Garden (1979-81) was accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to the Tate Gallery in 1993.