A look at my life

Whether dancing on the rooftops in Paris, sharing ideas with Pablo Picasso, or gathering starfish on the beaches of Cornwall, Eileen Agar (1899-1991) transformed the everyday into the extraordinary. Her legacy as a pioneering figure in the Surrealist movement is firmly established, and her work continues to captivate audiences with its otherworldly beauty and imaginative power. Agar’s life was no less extraordinary than her art. Here, she traces her life from her birth in Argentina to the late 1980s. She gives an intimate account of very different worlds: grand house parties in Buenos Aires and Belgravia as a young girl give way to la vie bohme in London and Paris, and a peripatetic existence with her lifelong partner, Hungarian writer Joseph Bard. Above all, it is Agar’s own unwavering resilience, infectious energy and drive that permeates this compelling memoir.