イゼル・コルクーン：異端のオカルティスト・アーティスト、世界を超えて創造した

Radical, esoteric, and defiantly independent, Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) remains one of the most enigmatic figures in British surrealism. A painter, poet, and occultist, her practice dissolved the boundaries between gender, sexuality, and spiritual inquiry, positioning her as a visionary far ahead of her time. Having debuted at Tate St Ives in February 2025, Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds comes to Tate Britain from June and promises to be the largest exhibition of her work ever staged, featuring over 170 works, including rare archival material and pieces never before displayed publicly.

Below, in the lead-up to this major exhibition coming to Tate Britain, we delve into the life and work of Colquhoun to explore some of the facets of her legacy that make her such an intriguing figure.

In 1927, Colquhoun enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she developed her distinctive approach to symbolism and composition. She was awarded joint first prize in the Summer Composition Competition for “Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes”, an early highlight in the exhibition’s curatorial journey. Reimagining the biblical tale of Judith – the widow who seduces and beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to protect her people – Colquhoun renders feminist vengeance through a surrealist lens.

Dreamlike fragmentation liberates Judith from the constraints of passive femininity, transforming her into an archetype of mystical, embodied power. As in many of Colquhoun’s early works, the female figures are imbued with a striking masculinity – more muscular and heroic than their male counterparts, their bold, fleshy limbs and austere stances confronting the viewer with authority rather than subservience. Her reworkings of myth often centre the sacred androgynous body, eroticism between women, and archetypes that resist binary structures – offering an ecstatic, visionary model of queer embodiment that feels startlingly contemporary.

From an early age, Colquhoun was drawn to the esoteric. In 1928, she joined the Quest Society, founded by George Robert Stow Mead, former secretary to Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. The Society aimed to synthesise religion, philosophy, and science through esoteric traditions, and it laid the foundations for Colquhoun’s lifelong spiritual inquiries.

She later affiliated herself with other occultist groups such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), drawing deeply from ceremonial magic, alchemy, and mystical symbolism. During her time at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, she was also exposed to the work of Salvador Dalí and other surrealists, expanding her interest in automatism and psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious. Colquhoun frequently corresponded with surrealist André Breton and remained deeply engaged with surrealist thought, even as her own practice increasingly veered toward mystical and feminist territory beyond the movement’s patriarchal centre.

Though aligned with British surrealism until 1940, Colquhoun eventually broke away from the movement, finding its increasingly orthodox politics incompatible with her pluralistic worldview. Her estrangement marked a decisive shift away from British modernism and toward a mystical, deeply personal exploration of inner and outer landscapes. “Symbolic scenes of ‘mind pictures’ may be dredged up from the depths of fantasy life,” she wrote, viewing her artistic practice not only as a creative technique but as a mode of divination – capable of accessing realms beyond temporal or bodily experience.

In 1958, amid a growing sense of estrangement from the artistic mainstream, Ithell Colquhoun relocated to the remote village of Paul in West Penwith, Cornwall – a landscape she had long regarded as sacred. Steeped in myth and mysticism, the region’s ancient wells, megalithic stones, druidic relics, and carved crosses became more than just motifs in her work; they formed the living architecture of her spiritual imagination. Here, she devoted herself to painting, writing, and esoteric study, weaving together Celtic history, poetic vision, and occult philosophy. For Colquhoun, the Cornish landscape functioned as both psychic terrain and spiritual archive – a liminal space where her artistic, mystical, and intellectual pursuits could converge.

For Colquhoun, myth was not merely inherited – it was alive, continually generated by the unconscious in dialogue with land and archetype. She often invoked sacred geography in her art. Works such as Dance of the Nine Maidens (1940) and Dance of the Nine Opals (1942) depict local rock formations as sentient, mythic figures. The Cornish stones are anthropomorphised, dancing, dreaming, almost breathing – inviting the viewer into a dreamtime where history, magic, and geology converge. Her sketch of Dance of the Nine Opals reveals a meticulous sensitivity to the energetic webs that pulse beneath the surface – currents invisible to the untrained eye yet charged with historical, folkloric, and mystical significance. 

Throughout her career, Colquhoun sought to map the hidden correspondences between plants, planets, body parts, and sacred geometry. Her work is charged with symbolic energy – merging anatomical forms with botanical structures, sexual imagery with cosmic diagrams.

In “Attributes of the Moon” (1947) Colquhoun conjures the landscape not as passive but as generative, and feminine, expressing a vision of the feminine as protean and plural – a living system of symbols in continual metamorphosis. In “The Anatomy” (1942), a yonic work that evokes the enfolding architecture of caves, Colquhoun draws on the elemental symbolism of the earth as womb – simultaneously a site of concealment, transformation, and power. The image recalls the myth of Daphne, metamorphosed into a laurel tree by her father, a river god, to escape the sexual pursuit of Apollo. “The Anatomy” not only asserts the generative force of the feminine, but also reframes retreat and metamorphosis as acts of self-preservation and agency.

A pivotal starting point for the 2025 exhibition was Tate’s acquisition of Colquhoun’s personal archive from the National Trust in 2019. Comprising over 5,000 items, including sketches, writings, and unpublished diagrams, the collection reveals the extent of her devotion to the mystical arts.

Her personal library – now housed in the Tate Archives – includes over 300 volumes on Greek mythology, alchemy, surrealism, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic. Among them are The Golden Dawn (1937), The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887), Liber 777 by Aleister Crowley (1909), Dreams and Dream Stories by Anna Kingsford (1888), and Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner (1954). Together, they trace a lineage of esoteric thought through which Colquhoun developed her own queer, visionary cosmology.

Colquhoun’s work dissolves conventional frameworks of gender, art, science, and spirit. She crafted a language in which imagination was not fantasy but a form of knowledge; where women could be both warriors and mystics; where eroticism was a divine force; and where the land itself was alive with memory and myth.

In our current cultural moment – one increasingly attuned to questions of fluid identity, ecological consciousness, and spiritual resurgence – Colquhoun’s legacy feels not only relevant but radical.

Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds is running at Tate Britain from 12 Jun to 19 October, 2025.

Radical, esoteric, and defiantly independent, Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) remains one of the most enigmatic figures in British surrealism. A painter, poet, and occultist, her practice dissolved the boundaries between gender, sexuality, and spiritual inquiry, positioning her as a visionary far ahead of her time. Having debuted at Tate St Ives in February 2025, Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds comes to Tate Britain from June and promises to be the largest exhibition of her work ever staged, featuring over 170 works, including rare archival material and pieces never before displayed publicly.

Below, in the lead-up to this major exhibition coming to Tate Britain, we delve into the life and work of Colquhoun to explore some of the facets of her legacy that make her such an intriguing figure.

In 1927, Colquhoun enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she developed her distinctive approach to symbolism and composition. She was awarded joint first prize in the Summer Composition Competition for “Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes”, an early highlight in the exhibition’s curatorial journey. Reimagining the biblical tale of Judith – the widow who seduces and beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to protect her people – Colquhoun renders feminist vengeance through a surrealist lens.

Dreamlike fragmentation liberates Judith from the constraints of passive femininity, transforming her into an archetype of mystical, embodied power. As in many of Colquhoun’s early works, the female figures are imbued with a striking masculinity – more muscular and heroic than their male counterparts, their bold, fleshy limbs and austere stances confronting the viewer with authority rather than subservience. Her reworkings of myth often centre the sacred androgynous body, eroticism between women, and archetypes that resist binary structures – offering an ecstatic, visionary model of queer embodiment that feels startlingly contemporary.

From an early age, Colquhoun was drawn to the esoteric. In 1928, she joined the Quest Society, founded by George Robert Stow Mead, former secretary to Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. The Society aimed to synthesise religion, philosophy, and science through esoteric traditions, and it laid the foundations for Colquhoun’s lifelong spiritual inquiries.

She later affiliated herself with other occultist groups such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), drawing deeply from ceremonial magic, alchemy, and mystical symbolism. During her time at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, she was also exposed to the work of Salvador Dalí and other surrealists, expanding her interest in automatism and psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious. Colquhoun frequently corresponded with surrealist André Breton and remained deeply engaged with surrealist thought, even as her own practice increasingly veered toward mystical and feminist territory beyond the movement’s patriarchal centre.

Though aligned with British surrealism until 1940, Colquhoun eventually broke away from the movement, finding its increasingly orthodox politics incompatible with her pluralistic worldview. Her estrangement marked a decisive shift away from British modernism and toward a mystical, deeply personal exploration of inner and outer landscapes. “Symbolic scenes of ‘mind pictures’ may be dredged up from the depths of fantasy life,” she wrote, viewing her artistic practice not only as a creative technique but as a mode of divination – capable of accessing realms beyond temporal or bodily experience.

In 1958, amid a growing sense of estrangement from the artistic mainstream, Ithell Colquhoun relocated to the remote village of Paul in West Penwith, Cornwall – a landscape she had long regarded as sacred. Steeped in myth and mysticism, the region’s ancient wells, megalithic stones, druidic relics, and carved crosses became more than just motifs in her work; they formed the living architecture of her spiritual imagination. Here, she devoted herself to painting, writing, and esoteric study, weaving together Celtic history, poetic vision, and occult philosophy. For Colquhoun, the Cornish landscape functioned as both psychic terrain and spiritual archive – a liminal space where her artistic, mystical, and intellectual pursuits could converge.

For Colquhoun, myth was not merely inherited – it was alive, continually generated by the unconscious in dialogue with land and archetype. She often invoked sacred geography in her art. Works such as Dance of the Nine Maidens (1940) and Dance of the Nine Opals (1942) depict local rock formations as sentient, mythic figures. The Cornish stones are anthropomorphised, dancing, dreaming, almost breathing – inviting the viewer into a dreamtime where history, magic, and geology converge. Her sketch of Dance of the Nine Opals reveals a meticulous sensitivity to the energetic webs that pulse beneath the surface – currents invisible to the untrained eye yet charged with historical, folkloric, and mystical significance. 

Throughout her career, Colquhoun sought to map the hidden correspondences between plants, planets, body parts, and sacred geometry. Her work is charged with symbolic energy – merging anatomical forms with botanical structures, sexual imagery with cosmic diagrams.

In “Attributes of the Moon” (1947) Colquhoun conjures the landscape not as passive but as generative, and feminine, expressing a vision of the feminine as protean and plural – a living system of symbols in continual metamorphosis. In “The Anatomy” (1942), a yonic work that evokes the enfolding architecture of caves, Colquhoun draws on the elemental symbolism of the earth as womb – simultaneously a site of concealment, transformation, and power. The image recalls the myth of Daphne, metamorphosed into a laurel tree by her father, a river god, to escape the sexual pursuit of Apollo. “The Anatomy” not only asserts the generative force of the feminine, but also reframes retreat and metamorphosis as acts of self-preservation and agency.

A pivotal starting point for the 2025 exhibition was Tate’s acquisition of Colquhoun’s personal archive from the National Trust in 2019. Comprising over 5,000 items, including sketches, writings, and unpublished diagrams, the collection reveals the extent of her devotion to the mystical arts.

Her personal library – now housed in the Tate Archives – includes over 300 volumes on Greek mythology, alchemy, surrealism, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic. Among them are The Golden Dawn (1937), The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887), Liber 777 by Aleister Crowley (1909), Dreams and Dream Stories by Anna Kingsford (1888), and Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner (1954). Together, they trace a lineage of esoteric thought through which Colquhoun developed her own queer, visionary cosmology.

Colquhoun’s work dissolves conventional frameworks of gender, art, science, and spirit. She crafted a language in which imagination was not fantasy but a form of knowledge; where women could be both warriors and mystics; where eroticism was a divine force; and where the land itself was alive with memory and myth.

In our current cultural moment – one increasingly attuned to questions of fluid identity, ecological consciousness, and spiritual resurgence – Colquhoun’s legacy feels not only relevant but radical.

Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds is running at Tate Britain from 12 Jun to 19 October, 2025.