Is this a safe space to share how much I loathe the blockbuster art exhibition? Overcrowded galleries full of gawpers taking photos of famous paintings, with no room to engage with an artist’s life’s work. I don’t want to blow up Tate Britain’s spot, but get yourself down there now if you want to have a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.
This clever double bill is how art should be “experienced”, with the time and space to immerse yourself in the artist’s life’s work. Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun, two British artists working at a pivotal moment in the 20th century, whose work is very different yet laced with latent queerness. It’s a perfect Pride month exhibition that doesn’t bonk you over the head with corporate rainbows.
Burra was a man in all the right places at the right time, with the talent to render it keenly. In his younger years he travelled through the south of France during its Années folles — the crazy years of the 1920s — and then to New York where he immersed himself in the jazz clubs of the Harlem Renaissance. Burra’s personal record collection is piped through the gallery. It’s a nice multisensory touch, but those who prefer silence are invited to borrow ear defenders from the accessibility station outside the entrance.
Burra had a sharp eye for fashion. You’ll want to spend ages looking closely at each canvas, the shoes and dramatic eye makeup of the time are rendered with exquisite detail. He rarely needed to sketch out plans for his composition, often working from memory. But the curators have a few rare plans for his pieces, along with his hilariously illustrated personal letters full of gossipy asides.
The artist was also in Spain when the Civil War broke out, witnessing frightening moments of violence that heralded a darker turn for his art. Trapped at home during the second world war, his paintings of the soldiers billeted along the British coast are terrifying and erotic, featuring uniformed men with tight buttocks and spooky Venetian carnival masks. In his later years, Burra focused on landscapes. But these are not the cheery flower fests of contemporary David Hockney — sombre and somewhat depressing, he bears witness to how the mining industry desecrates nature.
The curators have also foregrounded Burra’s disability with care and intelligence. Burra suffered from rheumatoid arthritis all his life, and found painting in oils at an easel difficult. He mostly worked in watercolours laid flat, working up the colours to gorgeous luminosity with gouache. The result is an almost inflated look to the figures.
Meanwhile, Colquhoun’s work has been criminally overlooked. Despite being in the vanguard of the British surrealist movement, she was a woman and regularly explored Sapphic themes with her work. This exhibition is a long-awaited crash course in her life’s work, which more than dabbled in the occult and the mystic. Moving over from Tate St Ives, this is the largest exhibition of Colquhoun’s art ever staged.
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She devoted a lot of her practice to working with automatism - an exploration of the unconscious action — specifically decalcomania. Blobs of paint arranged on one sheet of paper and pressed with another, to create a Rorschach test to interpret and work into fantastical scenes of gods and genitalia. There are plenty of wilting cucumbers and blossoming vulva shapes, with none of Georgia O’Keefe’s denials from Colquhoun about the deliberateness of the forms rendered.
The bigger canvasses are the showstoppers such as Scylla (1938), where two rocks could be wilting penises bumping heads, or the artist’s thighs in the bathtub complete with seaweedy clumps of pubic hair. It’s pastel hues were clearly the inspiration for the exhibition’s colour scheme. But it’s Colquhoun’s more miniature works that are the most captivating. The collaged pages of Boudoir, her storyboarding of an illicit lesbian encounter, are fascinating. In another room, I was captivated by a tiny watercolour of two women embracing in red and blue that at first glance looks like stained glass, it’s that glowing.
While the big institutions surely need the blockbuster exhibitions to get the crowds and the cash in, this two-hander is where you’ll find communion with art this summer.
Edward Burra – Ithell Colquhoun at Tate Britain, until 19 October 2025, tickets available here.
