James Henry Cecil Collins MBE (23 March 1908 – 4 June 1989) was an English painter and printmaker, originally associated with the Surrealist movement.

Life and works

From 1951 to 1975 he taught at the Central School of Art. Later, one of his pupils was Ginger Gilmour.

Collins' style in centered around pagan and early christian imagery in many of his works. The figure of the fool was an important one as well in his vision of the world and art (especially in his essay collection The Vision of the Fool), describing it as "an idealistic figure" pushing back against the "mechanic jungle of the contemporary world", representing "the poetic imagination of life, as inexplicable as the essence of life itself".

Collins was awarded an MBE in June 1979.Supplement The London Gazette. 26 June 1979. Retrieved 19 November 2022

A retrospective exhibition of his prints was held at the Tate Gallery in 1981. A retrospective of his paintings took place (before Collins died) in 1989. He was buried on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.

His widow Elisabeth Collins died in 2000 and, in 2008, 250 of Collins' paintings worth £1 million were given to museums and galleries in the UK.

In honour of the centenary of his birth, an exhibition of Collins' work took place at Tate Britain in Autumn 2008.

Exhibitions

1935 − Bloomsbury Gallery, London, England 1936 − International Surrealist Exhibition − New Burlington Galleries, London, England 1942 − Toledo Museum of Fine Art, US 1948 − New Paintings by Cecil Collins − Lefevre Gallery, London, England 1950 − New Paintings − Heffer Gallery, Cambridge, England 1951 − Leicester Galleries 1953 − Society of Mural Painters 1953 − Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1954 − Arts Council, London 1956 − Leicester Galleries 1959 − Whitechapel Gallery, London 1961 − Gallery Zygos, Athens, Greece 1964 − Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, US 1965 − Arthur Tooth & Sons 1967 − Crane Kalman Gallery 1971 − Britain's Contribution to Surrealism − Hamet Gallery, London, England 1972 − Retrospective Exhibition. Drawings, Paintings, Watercolours, Gouaches and Paintings 1936−1968 1981 − New Works − Anthony d'Offay, London, England 1981 − The Prints of Cecil Collins − Tate Gallery, London, England 1983 − Plymouth Arts Centre 1984 − Festival Gallery, Aldeburgh 1988 − Recent Paintings − Anthony d'Offay, London, England 1989 − Tate Gallery, London

Bibliography

The Gates of Silence (Grey Walls Press, 1944) by Wrey Gardiner with drawings by Cecil Collins The Vision of the Fool (Grey Walls Press, 1947) Cecil Collins: Painter of Paradise (1979) by Kathleen Raine The Quest for the Great Happiness (1988) by William Anderson In Celebration of Cecil Collins: Visionary Artist and Educator (2008) compiled and edited by Nomi Rowe The Magic Mirror: Thoughts and Reflections on Cecil Collins (2010) by John Stewart Allitt Meditations, Poems, Pages from a Sketch Book, by Cecil Collins (Golgonooza Press, 1997) The Vision of the Fool and other Writings, by Cecil Collins, enlarged edition (Golgonooza Press, 2002) Cecil Collins, The Artist as Writer and Image Maker, by Brian Keeble (Golgonooza Press, 2009)

References

External links

Cecil Collins at the Tate Gallery Eye of the Heart. The paintings of Cecil Collins. 1978. Arts Council England film collection