Between Worlds is a major two-venue retrospective—the first of its kind dedicated to Ithell Colquhoun—starting at Tate St Ives and then touring to Tate Britain. This landmark exhibition brings together over 170 works, many exhibited publicly for the first time. It spans Colquhoun’s extraordinary career as a painter, writer, and occultist, featuring automatic drawings, paintings, tarot designs, manuscripts, and archival material—including her powerful early self-portrait from The Ruth Borchard Collection. Painted c.1929 while still a student at the Slade, the self-portrait offers a bold early expression of Colquhoun’s lifelong engagement with mysticism, female sexuality, and Surrealist automatism. In the context of the retrospective it anchors a broader narrative of her artistic and spiritual evolution.
Through Between Worlds, Tate repositions Colquhoun not as a peripheral surrealist or eccentric esotericist, but as a truly visionary innovator whose work speaks to contemporary concerns with identity, spirituality, and the politics of the body.
Colquhoun’s self‑portrait anchors a broader narrative of her artistic and spiritual evolution. The exhibition follows a largely chronological structure, from early paintings rooted in mythology to her later occult-inflected automatic techniques and tarot card designs.
Tate St Ives: 1 Feb – 5 May 2025
Tate Britain, London: 13 June – 19 October 2025
For further details and visiting hour please see the Tate website here.
February 1, 2025