Marion Adnams was a highly significant British artist associated with Surrealism and had her first solo show at Jack Bilbo's celebrated Modern Art Gallery, London, in 1944. Major Surrealist figures including Emmy Bridgewater and Max Ernst were also exhibited at the gallery during this period. Her work was also included in the Dulwich Picture Gallery show 'British Surrealism' in 2020 alongside Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora Carrington, and there was a solo show dedicated to her at Derby Museum in 2017-18. ‘La Ronde’, 1963 (lot 159) is a brilliant example of her work from the 1960s, that has been in a private collection for many years.
This enigmatic, large work focuses on anthropomorphised trees, a subject that the artist would return to throughout her career. In her earlier works, such as 'L'infante égarée', 1944 (Manchester Art Gallery) and 'Medusa Grown Old', 1947 (Rediscovering Art by Women Collection), these would serve as a backdrop to her figures, their winding forms and shadows creating an additional tension to the work. Here, however, these leafless trees or perhaps vines become the subject themselves, twisting like ancient figures in an expansive landscape. Standing in a ring, one coloured deep red, they become evocative of an ancient ritual. Similar works by the artist, 'For lo, winter is past', 1963 and 'A Time to Be Born and a Time to Die', 1965 can be found in Derby Museums, near where the artist lived. The artist stopped painting in the late 1960s due to her deteriorating eyesight, sadly shortening her career as she was producing some of her most important works, making her intricate works quite rare to the open market. 
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Many artists responded to Surrealism in Britain from the 1930s, often in highly idiosyncratic ways, responding like Adnams to local myth and mystical rituals and practices. In our March sale, this is seen in the work of Charles Higgins ‘Pic’ (lot 160-161), who also exhibited with Jack Bilbo in the 1940s, John Melville (lot 150-154) and Sir Francis Rose (lot 157). Henry Moore (lot 155-156) was also influenced by Surrealism in the 1930s.
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The works by Graham Sutherland and Aubrey Williams, demonstrate how artists took the lessons of Surrealism in different ways in the Post-War era. The four works on paper by Graham Sutherland (lot 174-177) provide an interesting comparison with Adnams works, his twisted trunks, often heavy with thorns, combining a more abstract language with Christian symbolism.

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Guyanese-born Aubrey Williams pushed Adnam’s use of symbols and ancient ritual into a purely abstract language, creating some of the boldest and complex paintings made in London during the 1950s. ‘Volcanic Ash’, 1959, (lot 183) is certainly a masterpiece of this era, a work that is at once ancient and modern, evoking ancient cave painting and Jackson Pollock simultaneously in a powerful exploration of paint.