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Born: 1906
Died: 1999
Summary of Emmy Bridgwater
Melancholy and a macabre fascination in the degenerative course of life permeate Emmy Bridgwater’s work, which includes paintings, drawings, collages, and poems. Although she was somewhat of a mystery in her early years as an artist, in 1936 she went to London’s International Surrealist Exhibition and from then on became a fixture in the art world for the next two decades. The show not only served as a tremendous source of inspiration, but it also exposed Bridgwater to other artists, such as Conroy Maddox and Edith Rimmington, who would go on to become lifelong friends. The artist’s career has been marked by themes of dealing with suffering and realising that mental anguish can be just as severe and debilitating as physical illness. Since a result, she is required to wear “necessary bandages” as she is not physically injured, but rather mentally and emotionally. It’s as though Bridgwater harbours resentment over the fact that her artistic career was shattered and shortened because she had to put her family’s needs ahead of her own.
Because she was an automatist, Bridgwater worked with less conscious control in the hopes of revealing more about her personality that was otherwise concealed. She was more inspired by André Masson’s writhing line than by René Magritte and Salvador Dali’s meticulously drawn dreamscapes. According to Ithell Colquhoun, who was a fellow artist, automatism is the greatest way to portray the natural world’s phenomena since they are in continuous flux and metamorphic change.
Like many female Surrealists and especially Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar, and Edith Rimmington, Bridgwater’s images include birds often. An iconic and revealing emblem of Surrealism, the flying bird symbolises a common yearning to be free of patriarchal shackles and to reconcile the opposing worlds of heaven and earth at this time in history.
A significant contribution made by Bridgwater was the strengthening of links between the Birmingham and London branches of England’s Surrealist Group. She belonged to both organisations and, unlike many others, she chose to share her time, skills, and allegiance equally between both.
Bridgwater’s poetry is often depressing and bleak, with a lot of allusions to death and the end of things. Some might argue, as did the dissident Surrealist leaders like Georges Bataille, that Bridgwater does a commendable job of capturing the recurrent angst and nightmares that afflict the human condition. She does this in opposition to André Breton and his supporters, who focused on expressing the high ideas and aspirations that motivate us.
Biography of Emmy Bridgwater
Childhood
The midlands of England are home to the birthplace of Emmy Bridgwater: Edgbaston. Her parents, both professional accountants, raised her in a Methodist home. A middle-class kid growing up in a big family, she seemed to have had an enjoyable upbringing.
Early Life
Bridgwater attended the Birmingham School of Art from the age of sixteen to his early twenties, when he studied under Bernard Fleetwood-guidance. Walker’s She went to art school in Oxford after graduation, paying for it all on her own while working as a secretary.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much to go on for Bridgwater at this point in his career. However, it is well-known that for the artist, 1936 was a watershed year. She went to the London International Surrealist Exhibition, when she first met Conroy Maddox and the Melville brothers, Robert and John, who were prominent members of the Birmingham Surrealist group. They captivated her right away. She used automatist methods to investigate the irrational and evil aspect of the unconscious in her own work, and she was hooked on Surrealism ever since. It was during these two years in London that she attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she studied painting and drawing. Upon her return, she joined other Birmingham Surrealists in exhibiting during the late 1930s.
This Surrealist group met at the Kardomah Café on New Street, or the Trocadero bar on Temple Street, and subsequently in Conroy Maddox’s Balsall Heath home. The group was headed by Conroy Maddox. For a long time the Birmingham Surrealists (which included artists such as John & Robert Melville and William Gear & Oscar Mellor as well as Henry Reed, Stuart Gilbert, and Desmond Morris), the London Surrealists were seen as “inauthentic” and even anti-Surrealist because of their approach. “If London was trying to make a contribution, we were not interested” Robert Melville said. Conroy Maddox criticised Herbert Read, Henry Moore, and Graham Sutherland as “too middle-class” and “purveyors of the picturesque” among the London Surrealists. As a result, the Birmingham Surrealists chose to identify more closely with Parisian Surrealism, staying in touch with artists like André Breton, Max Ernst, and Salvador Dali during their time in Birmingham. However, unlike her male colleagues, Bridgwater had no ill feelings against the London Surrealists.
Despite being an official member of the Birmingham Surrealist Group, she joined the London Group in 1940 and participated in and exhibited with both organisations throughout the decade. Bridgwater played a crucial role in bridging the gap between the two groups. With the London-based surrealist Edith Rimmington, she formed a close relationship. The two artists used similar symbolism in their work.
The majority of Bridgwater’s work was paintings and ink drawings throughout the 1930s and 1940s, with many of his works including birds (especially swans, ravens, and hybrid birds), eggs, and foliage amid surreal, but melancholy, and eerie settings of the time. In addition, she used automatist lines that looked like tendrils, writhed, and were potentially hazardous due to entanglement. At the time, Toni de Renzio (editor-in-chief of the Surrealist publication Arson) eloquently characterised her own work: “These images are hidden from view. These people are crying out, and their screams touch our hearts and move us. Painfully, our own intestines are sucked from us and twisted into images whose meaning we didn’t want to discover.”
Mid Life
She spent time in both west London (where she resided in a tiny flat on Lancaster Gate) and Birmingham in the early 1940s, splitting her time and energy between the two places. The Surrealist Magazine Arson was one of her many publications, and she had a brief but passionate relationship with Toni de Renzio, the magazine’s editor. The event took place in 1942, the same year that Bridgwater had his first solo exhibition at London’s Jack Bilbo’s Modern Gallery. Bridgwater wrote to the Surrealist journal Fulcrum in 1944, when he was busy producing a lot of poetry. When Simon Watson-Taylor published the Surrealist magazine Free Unions/Unions Libres in 1946, she contributed to the first and only issue, which included works by British and French Surrealists side by side. Bridgwater’s artistic and literary output peaked during this time period.
Andre Breton chose just five British painters in 1947, including Bridgwater (together with Eileen Agar and Leonora Carrington), to exhibit their work at the Galerie Maeght in Paris for the International Surrealist Exhibition. Last but not least, a significant Surrealist group show took place in this city. Bridgwater was chosen by the British Surrealists to sign the Surrealist group’s statement in France, reaffirming the group’s commitment to Surrealism’s ideals and establishing Bridgwater’s status as a key member of the Surrealist movement.
Bridgwater was saddened to return to England after such a wonderful experience to find that she had less and less time to create art as she was burdened with caring for her elderly mother and handicapped sister. Her artistic career came to an end in 1953 when she moved to Stratford-upon-Avon to work full-time as a caretaker.
Late Life
Both Leonora Carrington and Meret Oppenheim’s essays gained worldwide acclaim in the mid-1970s as interest in Surrealist women artists grew. The consequence was that a large number of hitherto uninvolved women, such as Agar, Colquhoun, and Bridgwater, joined the newly formed Surrealist organisations. Bridgwater, in fact, resurrected her creative career and became a prolific collage artist for a while. Unfortunatelly however, she quit creating art again in 1986, this time for good. She spent her last years in a Solihull nursing home, where she died in 1999 at the age of 91.
As arts professor Peter Stockwell of the University of Nottingham put it, Bridgwater’s journey through Surrealism was “decentered” Bridgwater’s approach was rebellious. She was more interested in Surrealism in England than in France, although she nevertheless had close connections to the latter. Along with this, she refused to be a party to the surrealist rivalry that arose between the London and Birmingham groups. It has been said that her impact on British surrealism was comparable to that of Salvador Dal joining the ranks of French surrealists, according to University of Nice art history professor Michel Remy. In light of what we know about Bridgwater’s art, this sounds like a high assertion, but maybe it’s just because study is still scattered and lacking in comprehensiveness.
The fact that Bridgwater was a woman in an all-male organisation (together with her fellow Surrealists, and particularly Edith Rimmington in this instance) sparked what Stockwell refers to as a “feminist uprising.” “a subculture that isn’t mainstream Their indulgent fantasy of “Mad Love” had been replaced by an asexual picture that distanced them from the danger of being simply objectified as women and instead created a multicoloured image of alienated women who were also estranged, but alienated in an entirely other way.” And Bridgwater was a member of the Surrealist group that painted pictures of legendary tales, metamorphosing animals, and desolate settings.
According to the obituary written by writer Jeremy Jenkinson for Bridgwater, “They reveal a talent for plunging into one’s own subconscious and then translating the ideas she has while there into powerful, unabashedly emotive landscapes that frequently pierce the mind’s deepest depths. Using just a few colours and painting in thick layers, she was able to incorporate apparently unconnected items into her bleak landscapes, giving the works a narrative aspect of their own “‘s a good place to start. This group of women artists had role models in the other female Surrealists, and this provided them access to the idea that women are active art creators as opposed to just models who serve as sources of inspiration for their male counterparts.
Famous Art by Emmy Bridgwater
Stark Encounter
1940
This fast and instinctive pen-and-ink painting by Bridgwater features one of her most well-known themes, the bird-woman mashup. Stark Encounter, like other comparable pieces, depicts transformed people in front of a white background as if they were in a dream. While Bridgwater’s works may appear dreamlike in their ambiguity, they are realistic documents from a region of phantasmal hopes and murky desires where few remain to observe and even fewer remain clear-sighted, according to Robert Melville. His works depict “the saddening, half-seen ‘presences’ encountered by the artist on her journey through the labyrinths of good and evil […] although they are dreamlike in their ambiguity they are realistic documents from a region of phantasmal hopes and murky desires where few stay to observe and fewer still remain clear-sighted.” In addition, Jeremy Jenkinson praises her work in the following way: “There is an organic fusing and painful gestation in her paintings, sketches, and poetry. There is no regard for ‘aesthetic good taste,’ whether classical or not. None whatever is given. A primal sense of the metamorphoses that took place in the womb and early life is all that is left; weird sequences of birds and eggs and eyes and young girls and open tomb are all that remains.”
Night Work is About to Commence
1940-1943
The black raven is the star of this artwork, which depicts a strange environment created by the union of inorganic and mechanical elements contained inside a huge bathtub or basin. The bird is perched on the edge of a towel or sheet that has been thrown over it. As stated in Breton’s initial manifesto, “sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” happened by accident and exemplifies the basic Surrealist concept of generating unexpected juxtapositions and connecting seemingly unrelated items (1924). Theatrical sways and set-up meet a menacing spiked hammer in this clip. Threat and deception throughout the film’s narrative.
Untitled
1940
Bridgwater’s use of automatism may be seen in this drawing. The artist makes no conscious effort to regulate their hand’s movement, instead allowing their subconscious to take over. Both Bridgwater and André Masson, a well-known French Surrealist, deal with violent themes as well as rapture and sensuality. Described as “tortured and sensuous” Masson’s art fits well with this drawing by Bridgwater. This drawing’s bending and lengthening of limbs reminds me a lot of André Masson’s 1939 painting, The Genius of the Species (The Origin of Life).
Necessary Bandages
1942
A mummified meaty face dominates the frame in this artwork, conveying an uncertain, melancholy mood. As the subject’s attention drifts to the bottom right, a palpable feeling of melancholy permeates the image as a whole. Toward the edge of the painting, a smoky masculine face (almost reptilian in appearance) may be seen smoking a cigarette. Bridgwater’s boyfriend, Toni del Renzio, had just left her for another woman when this picture was created. There is a struggle and suffering associated with love in this piece, comparable to Eileen Agar’s most well-known sculpture, Angel of Anarchy (1939). While Bridgwater produced a painted head covered in bandages, Agar utilised fabric pieces to cover a plaster image of her boyfriend, Joseph Bard, in a sculptural 3D counterpart of the painting.
The Fountain
1945
In this artwork, a mysterious androgynous humanoid looks menacingly at the spectator from the background. To create a real ‘fountain,’ the figure appears out of the earth, poised on the edge of a precipice, and mixes with the aquatic environment to become a part of the river that flows. A three-pronged, organic-looking protrusion appears behind the enigmatic torso. Even while it seems to be an integral part of the natural waterfall, it also serves as a reminder of Bridgwater’s long-standing fascination with wings. The person and the bug are juxtaposed in this picture, as opposed to her earlier work, which included a plethora of bird imagery. As a result, an intriguing comparison can be drawn between this painting and Edith Rimmington’s The Decoy (1948), a friend and colleague of Bridgwater’s. There are many butterflies in different stages of metamorphosis in Rimmington’s The Decoy, including one with skin peeling away. Many Surrealists, like Bridgwater, were fascinated by natural phenomena like mimicry, some of whom had studied the work of French thinker Roger Caillois on the topic. As a whole, The Fountain evokes feelings of loneliness and yearning while also emphasising the fact that no amount of human effort will be able to stop rivers from flowing or earth cracks from developing. It’s important to remember that humans are only one component in the larger cycle of life, death, and regeneration.
Leda and the Swan
1950
In this piece, curving, swirling fields of inky black and powder soft blue dominate the background. Top-to-bottom arching black lines are covered with horizontal grey swabs, giving the picture an air of gloom and foreboding. In the image’s centre, an unidentifiable organic shape seems to be growing out of a green and peach colour scheme. a flower-like protrusion grows from the right side of the central form, which is elongated and ovoid, and another leafy protrusion extends downward from below. A fusion of the black and blue backdrop and the central figure’s swaying movement suggest a male-female hybrid form (a Surrealist motif frequently used).
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Melancholy and a macabre fascination in the degenerative course of life permeate Emmy Bridgwater’s work, which includes paintings, drawings, collages, and poems.
- Although she was somewhat of a mystery in her early years as an artist, in 1936 she went to London’s International Surrealist Exhibition and from then on became a fixture in the art world for the next two decades.
- The show not only served as a tremendous source of inspiration, but it also exposed Bridgwater to other artists, such as Conroy Maddox and Edith Rimmington, who would go on to become lifelong friends.
- The artist’s career has been marked by themes of dealing with suffering and realising that mental anguish can be just as severe and debilitating as physical illness.
- Since a result, she is required to wear “necessary bandages” as she is not physically injured, but rather mentally and emotionally.
- It’s as though Bridgwater harbours resentment over the fact that her artistic career was shattered and shortened because she had to put her family’s needs ahead of her own.
- Because she was an automatist, Bridgwater worked with less conscious control in the hopes of revealing more about her personality that was otherwise concealed.
- She was more inspired by André Masson’s writhing line than by René Magritte and Salvador Dali’s meticulously drawn dreamscapes.
- According to Ithell Colquhoun, who was a fellow artist, automatism is the greatest way to portray the natural world’s phenomena since they are in continuous flux and metamorphic change.
- Like many female Surrealists and especially Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar, and Edith Rimmington, Bridgwater’s images include birds often.
- An iconic and revealing emblem of Surrealism, the flying bird symbolises a common yearning to be free of patriarchal shackles and to reconcile the opposing worlds of heaven and earth at this time in history.
- A significant contribution made by Bridgwater was the strengthening of links between the Birmingham and London branches of England’s Surrealist Group.
- She belonged to both organisations and, unlike many others, she chose to share her time, skills, and allegiance equally between both.
- Bridgwater’s poetry is often depressing and bleak, with a lot of allusions to death and the end of things.
- Some might argue, as did the dissident Surrealist leaders like Georges Bataille, that Bridgwater does a commendable job of capturing the recurrent angst and nightmares that afflict the human condition.
- She does this in opposition to André Breton and his supporters, who focused on expressing the high ideas and aspirations that motivate us.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
