Cecil Collins
James Henry Cecil Collins MBE (23 March 1908 – 4 June 1989) was an English painter and printmaker, originally associated with the Surrealist movement.
Also recorded as Cecil James Henry Collins · James Henry Cecil Collins
Cecil Collins
- Born
- 1908
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James Henry Cecil Collins MBE (23 March 1908 – 4 June 1989) was an English painter and printmaker, originally associated with the Surrealist movement.
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Life and works
Life and works
From 1951 to 1975 he taught at the Central School of Art. Later, one of his pupils was Ginger Gilmour. Collins' style in centered around pagan and early christian imagery in many of his works. The figure of the fool was an important one as well in his vision of the world and art (especially in his essay collection The Vision of the Fool), describing it as "an idealistic figure" pushing back against the "mechanic jungle of the contemporary world", representing "the poetic imagination of life, as inexplicable as the essence of life itself". Collins was awarded an MBE in June 1979. A retrospective exhibition of his prints was held at the Tate Gallery in 1981. A retrospective of his paintings took place (before Collins died) in 1989. He was buried on the western side of Highgate Cemetery. His widow Elisabeth Collins died in 2000 and, in 2008, 250 of Collins' paintings worth £1 million were given to museums and galleries in the UK. In honour of the centenary of his birth, an exhibition of Collins' work took place at Tate Britain in Autumn 2008.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
• 1935 − Bloomsbury Gallery, London, England • 1936 − International Surrealist Exhibition − New Burlington Galleries, London, England • 1942 − Toledo Museum of Fine Art, US • 1948 − New Paintings by Cecil Collins − Lefevre Gallery, London, England • 1950 − New Paintings − Heffer Gallery, Cambridge, England • 1951 − Leicester Galleries • 1953 − Society of Mural Painters • 1953 − Ashmolean Museum, Oxford • 1954 − Arts Council, London • 1956 − Leicester Galleries • 1959 − Whitechapel Gallery, London • 1961 − Gallery Zygos, Athens, Greece • 1964 − Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, US • 1965 − Arthur Tooth & Sons • 1967 − Crane Kalman Gallery • 1971 − Britain's Contribution to Surrealism − Hamet Gallery, London, England • 1972 − Retrospective Exhibition. Drawings, Paintings, Watercolours, Gouaches and Paintings 1936−1968 • 1981 − New Works − Anthony d'Offay, London, England • 1981 − The Prints of Cecil Collins − Tate Gallery, London, England • 1983 − Plymouth Arts Centre • 1984 − Festival Gallery, Aldeburgh • 1988 − Recent Paintings − Anthony d'Offay, London, England • 1989 − Tate Gallery, London
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Gilmour, Ginger. Ginger Art.
- 2.ArtParkS Sculpture Park. Ginger Gilmour Sculptor details.
- 3.Thom Waite. Folk horror and the Holy Fool: how Paganism re-enchanted modern Britain. Dazed. 12 June 2023.
- 4.Supplement The London Gazette. 26 June 1979. Retrieved 19 November 2022
- 5.Artist's £1m works left to the nation. BBC News. 2 March 2001.
- 6.Andrew Lambirth. Cecil Collins – A Centenary Exhibition. The Spectator. 3 September 2008.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 9
- The Gates of Silence (Grey Walls Press, 1944) by Wrey Gardiner with drawings by Cecil Collins
- The Vision of the Fool (Grey Walls Press, 1947)
- Cecil Collins: Painter of Paradise (1979) by Kathleen Raine
- The Quest for the Great Happiness (1988) by William Anderson
- In Celebration of Cecil Collins: Visionary Artist and Educator (2008) compiled and edited by Nomi Rowe
- The Magic Mirror: Thoughts and Reflections on Cecil Collins (2010) by John Stewart Allitt
- Meditations, Poems, Pages from a Sketch Book, by Cecil Collins (Golgonooza Press, 1997)
- The Vision of the Fool and other Writings, by Cecil Collins, enlarged edition (Golgonooza Press, 2002)
- Cecil Collins, The Artist as Writer and Image Maker, by Brian Keeble (Golgonooza Press, 2009)
References
Citations
References
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Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 19 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Paintings
19,456 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
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