Portrait of Feroze Mehta
An artist and writer born in Assam, India, Colquhoun studied art in London at the Slade School. She was one of the Surrealist Movement's most flamboyant and innovative members, and was one of the few women to contribute both theoretical texts and fantasy writings. She mercilessly parodied the male dominated surrealist obsession with sexual imagery and eroticism. Her association with the Movement was, however, brief. She left in 1940, deploring their dictates and factions, to pursue her occult studies. The hard outline in this portrait stems from Northern Italian and German painting, but its expressiveness anchors it firmly within 1930s surrealism. The sitter is presumably Indian, possibly connected to the artist through her life in Assam. His foreign character is highly compatible with the modelling; he was perhaps a 1930s intellectual.
