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Emmy Bridgwater


Emma Frith Bridgwater (10 November 1906 – 13 March 1999), known as Emmy Bridgwater, was an English artist and poet associated with the Surrealist movement.

Based at times in both Birmingham and London, she was a significant member of the Birmingham Surrealists and of the London-based British Surrealist Group, and was an important link between the surrealists of the two cities.

Michel Remy, professor of art history at the University of Nice and author of Surrealism in Britain, describes her influence as "of the same importance to British surrealism as the arrival of Dalí in the ranks of the French surrealists".

Emmy Bridgwater was born in the upmarket Edgbaston district of Birmingham, the third daughter of a chartered accountant and Methodist. Showing an early interest in painting and drawing, she studied under Bernard Fleetwood-Walker at the Birmingham School of Art for three years from 1922 before further study at a local art school in Oxford paid for by work as a secretary.

Bridgwater's aesthetic direction was transformed by attending the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936, where she met Conroy Maddox, John Melville and Robert Melville - the key figures of the Birmingham Surrealists. From this point on her work began to explore the more fearful sides of the subconscious, often using automatist techniques. Studying for periods at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London during 1936 and 1937 she retained a base in Birmingham and exhibited as a member of the Birmingham Group throughout the late 1930s, also exhibiting at the London Gallery after being introduced to owner E. L. T. Mesens by Robert Melville.


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