Музей изобразительных искусств's video: 19-20 -

Eileen Forrester Agar (1 December 1899 – 17 November 1991) was a British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement. Born in Buenos Aires to a Scottish father and American mother, Agar moved with her family to London in 1911. Her father was the head of a family business selling windmills and other agricultural machinery to Argentina. At a young age, Agar became fascinated by pictures by Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham. Before attending school, Agar grew up in her family villa Quinta la Lila learning from her nanny and a French governess. Agar describes her childhood as being "full of balloons, hoops and St Bernard dogs". The family travelled to Britain approximately every two years during her childhood. Aged six Agar was sent to England to a private school in Canford Cliffs. At her second school, Heathfield School, Ascot, Agar's teacher Lucy Kemp-Welchencouraged her to continue to develop her art. In 1914 at the onset of World War I Agar was sent away to Tudor Hall from her home in London to avoid the hardships of war. In Kent the music master Horace Kesteven began introducing her to various artists. Through Kesteven, Agar met Charles Sims who exposed her to some of Paul Nash's early works. Agar describes her time with Sims as "I found myself in a milieu of art where art was a valued part of daily life". Before the war ended, Agar attended the Demoiselles Ozanne to improve her French and while she was there she took weekly oil painting lessons at the Byam Shaw School of Art in Kensington. Agar found the Byam Shaw too academic and pleaded with her family to allow her to look elsewhere to continue her schooling. This infuriated her mother and after an argument with her parents Agar notes in her diary that she got up early, ate lunch with her sisters, and packed her bags and departed from Paddington Station. She left a note for her parents stating that she was on her way to Truro and St Mawes where she would stay with a family friend the De Kays. After World War Two, Agar started a new productive phase of her life, holding almost 16 solo exhibitions between 1946 and 1985. By the 1960s she was producing Tachist paintings with Surrealist elements. In 1988 she published her autobiography A Look At My Life. then in 1990, she was elected as a Royal Academy Associate. She died in London. Agar has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including Tate, Derby Art Gallery, Bradford and the UK Government collection. Eileen Agar is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Grave No. 17606. Goshka Macuga's 2007 exhibition, part of Tate Britain's Art Now Series, used material drawn from Eileen Agar's Archive.