GRACE PAILTHORPE (BRITISH, 1883-1971)
Untitled
oil on canvas
25.4 x 35.5 cm. (10 x 14 in.)
Painted on 28-9 September, 1936

Provenance
With Birch & Conran Fine Art, London

ARR

Grace Pailthorpe, an artist in her own right, in addition to being a successful surgeon and psychology researcher displays many evidences of this grounding in much of her work. Her paintings, historically unappreciated, draw a unique reference to the artist’s reality as a surgeon, while simultaneously solidifying her place among the British Surrealists. In each canvas, Pailthorpe details the scrutiny of her own experiences as doctor during the war, and a researcher within Birmingham Prison in addition to her specific research on psychological treatment of juvenile delinquency.

Her work while capturing these realities correspondingly drawing on elements of Freudian analysis and her own findings, as a scholar of psychology. Colour, form and dystopianism are all prominent features of the artist’s oeuvre. She preferred to call her style ‘psychorealism’ rather than Surrealism.

Her and long-term collaborator and partner, Reuben Mednikoff, despite their expulsion from the group and position at the periphery, aesthetically and ideologically display the workings of two British surrealists, participating in the activities of the British Surrealist Group, namely their first exhibition at the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, run by Peggy Guggenheim, in 1939. Both artist, in their life’s work hold a prominent and unique position not only as once members of the esteemed group, but also as individual creatives.