Marion Elizabeth Adnams was born in Derby in 1898 where she remained, for the most part, until her death, aged ninety-six. During the course of her long life, she forged a reputation as a painter of deeply distinctive and dream-like visions inspired by the Surrealist movement. Adnams exhibited almost continuously in London and regional art galleries from the late 1930s and examples of her work can be found in many public collections, alongside that of her friends and contemporaries Evelyn Gibbs and Eileen Agar. Despite this, her work is largely forgotten today. This important exhibition brings together the full and diverse range of her art for the first time in almost fifty years in a bid to recapture the legacy of this most remarkable artist.
In her dreamlike, detailed Surrealist paintings, Marion Adnams often depicted scenes and landmarks from her native Derby, where this long-overdue celebration of her work is taking place. Born in 1898 – at a time when, as her friend Eileen Agar put it, “men thought of women simply as muses” – Adnams began taking evening art classes while teaching at a girls’ school. She found her way to critical and commercial success in the 1930s-60s, before failing eyesight forced her to stop painting, though she lived to age 96. Sadly, today her work has been largely forgotten, but this first major retrospective should be a catalyst for a reevaluation of her place in 20th-century art history.
Marion Adnams: A Singular Woman. Derby Museums and Gallery, Derby
