The exhibition “Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds” opens at the Tate seaside branch in St. Ives, Cornwall. In that ancient landscape—which became a place of magical connections for the artist-writer-poet-sorceress during the Second World War—Colquhoun found that the craggy cliffs and wild shores helped her access the vital forces among all living things and the beyond. She sought to transform herself and society, not through intellectual analysis but through the alchemy of the unconscious. Like her contemporaries Remedios Varo, Alice Rahon, Leonora Carrington, and Leonor Fini, Colquhoun believed in the power of art to achieve cosmic consciousness. In her 20s, attracted to secret societies, Colquhoun was already on the road to spiritual enlightenment. In 1935, influenced by the work of Salvador Dalí and the other Surrealists, which she first saw in France in 1931, Colquhoun moved away from realism and began to depict exotic flowers and botanical images. Nature and eros became gateways to the spirit world. Colquhoun was 81 when she died, in 1988. “Between Worlds” moves to Tate Britain in London in June. Perhaps “Priestess Colquhoun,” as she was officially christened by an occult society, will manifest somewhere along the journey and lead the way to a more harmonious year. —Patricia Zohn

Travels to: Tate Britain, London (opening in June 2025)