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Notes:
Heads and profiles fascinated Agar and they were often the focus of her work, whether as objects, collages or oils, and as such Portrait Head is a fine example of a reoccurring motif in the work of Eileen Agar. It is among several compositions Agar produced during the 1930s and 1940s when she was particularly interested in depicting Janus, the Roman god traditionally represented by two heads looking in opposite directions because he symbolised the past and the future, having been granted the power to see both. Painted the year after the International Surrealist Exhibition, Portrait Head dates from a significant period in Eileen Agar's career. Having been invited by Herbert Read and Roland Penrose to exhibit in this exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London, Agar found her work displayed alongside Dali's, Ernst's and Miro's. Although she was forever associated with the Surrealists because of this exhibition, collages such as Portrait Head are evidence that the abstract and Cubist language was of equal importance to her, borrowing from both to create her unique style within which to express Surreal ideas.