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British painter and writer. Born in Assam, India, the daughter of a civil servant, she moved to England as a child. She studied painting at the Slade School, London, from 1927 to 1931. While a student she engaged in multi-figure narrative compositions. The Judgement of Paris (1930, Hove Museum and Art Gallery) shows an attempt to reconcile *Art Deco stylization with the solid construction of the human body demanded by the Slade. The almost Valkyrian figure of Athena strides forward with helmet and spear, very definitely the goddess of war rather than of wisdom; Juno and Aphrodite are equally self-possessed and unalluring; the seated Paris is almost an afterthought. In 1931 she encountered Surrealism in Paris. After the 1936 London International Surrealist exhibition she came under the influence of Salvador Dalí.

Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)


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