Emmy Bridgwater

A reassessment of Emmy Bridgwater's life and work following her one-woman show at Blond Fine Art, London, in July 1990. Generally regarded as an `automatist', Emmy Bridgwater's background differentiated her from other women artists. Her first contact with Surrealism was the First International Surrealist exhibition in London in 1936 which inspired her expressionist method. Her paintings and drawings bring together unrelated objects in desolate landscapes suggesting various narrative readings and producing images displaying great emotional anguish. The authors examine the paintings Brave Morning and Tomorrow's Choice in detail and commenting on the wit of Bridgwater's pen and ink drawings and her poetry. They conclude that there is a need to reassess the theories of modernism after attention to women artists and establish Emmy Bridgwater as not fitting into the conventionalized history of the Surrealist woman.