Nadia Bellingeri
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 29AR
Ithell Colquhoun(British, 1906-1988)Graphomania : Blue-Black 20.7 x 29.6 cm. (8 1/2 x 11 5/8 in.)
Ending from 1 May 2025, 12:00 BST
Online, London, New Bond Street£1,500 - £2,000
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Ingram Reid
Head Of Sale
Robert Jenkinson
Cataloguer
Ithell Colquhoun (British, 1906-1988)
Graphomania : Blue-Black
signed with monogram and dated '71' (lower right); titled and dated again 'GRAPHOMANIA : BLUE-BLACK/1971' (on the backboard)
pen and ink, ballpoint, wash and collage on paper laid on card
20.7 x 29.6 cm. (8 1/2 x 11 5/8 in.)
signed with monogram and dated '71' (lower right); titled and dated again 'GRAPHOMANIA : BLUE-BLACK/1971' (on the backboard)
pen and ink, ballpoint, wash and collage on paper laid on card
20.7 x 29.6 cm. (8 1/2 x 11 5/8 in.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Sale; David Lay, Penzance, 14 October 2003, lot 305 (part lot), where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
Exhibited
Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun: Montages, Gouaches, Collages, 12-24 July 1971, cat.no.36
Exeter, City Art Gallery, Ithell Colquhoun: Paintings, Collages and Drawings, 26 September-21 October 1972, cat.no.59
Literature
Richard Shillitoe, Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature, 2009, cat.no.709, p.370
Graphomania is a strategy developed by Ithell Colquhoun to short-circuit the power of the conscious by letting the pen go into knots, come back on itself, create whirls, eddies and snake-like figures, all of them being attempts to draw circles to go deeper and deeper into the dark, hidden territories of the subconscious, vertiginous, hypnotic spiralling to the centre of telluric forces, where the imagination can feel the energy which brings together man and nature.
We are grateful to Dr Richard Shillitoe for his assistance in cataloguing this lot and to Professor Michel Remy for compiling this catalogue entry.