Today is the final day to visit Eileen Agar at Alison Jacques in London, an exhibition bringing together paintings and collages spanning almost 30 years of the artist’s career, from 1957 to 1985.

Throughout her practice, Agar developed a unique visual language that moved between Surrealism and Abstraction. As she explained in 1988: “Abstract art and Surrealism were the two movements that interested me most, and I see nothing incompatible in that… one is abstract, the other surreal – it is point and counterpoint.”

A significant focus of the exhibition is Agar’s lifelong fascination with nature. Following the Second World War, which she described as a period of “physical and spiritual famine,” journeys to Tenerife, Cornwall and the Lake District helped renew her imagination. Her post-war works reflect this sense of recovery through softer palettes, layered surfaces and organic forms.

One of the exhibition’s highlights is the celebrated Rock series of 1985. Inspired by photographs Agar had taken decades earlier of the extraordinary granite formations at Ploumanac’h in Brittany, these works transform ancient geological forms into fantastical beings. Faces emerge from stone, animals appear within cliffs, and landscapes become psychological terrains. It is a reminder that for Agar, reality itself was never fixed. Every surface contained another possibility.

Her later paintings from the 1970s and 1980s combine translucent colour, geometric structures and recurring motifs including shells, birds, flowers, hands and silhouetted figures. Blending abstraction, symbolism and elements of the natural world, the exhibition highlights Agar’s enduring ability to transform everyday forms into poetic and surreal compositions.

The exhibition closes today at Alison Jacques, offering a final opportunity to discover the work of one of Britain’s most distinctive Surrealist artists.

Image: Eileen Agar, Shells and Starfish, 1957, pastel and watercolour on paper, 43.3 x 52 cm (17 x 20 1/2 in).