Catherine Yarrow (1904-1990)

Catherine Yarrow (1904-1990) was an English artist known for printmaking, painting, ceramics and pottery in a surrealist mode. Born in 1904 in Harpenden, near London, Yarrow initially studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) before moving to Paris at the age of 20. Here she established close links with the Surrealist group, particularly Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti, whom she was romantically involved with. Yarrow studied engraving at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 studio in Montparnasse, producing works alongside Picasso, Miró, Masson, and Mary Wykeham, before being apprenticed to the master potter, José Llorens Artigas.

In the mid 1930s Yarrow suffered a nervous breakdown and moved to Zurich for treatment under Carl Jung and his daughter, Gret. She received further psychiatric care from a clinic in Morges, on Lake Geneva, and produced a series of dream-inspired works here featuring menacing, geometric personages.

As the Nazis occupied Paris in June, 1940, Yarrow joined her close friend Leonora Carrington in Saint-Martin-d'Ardérche, and persuaded her to flee to Spain. The pair crossed the border at Andorra - driving from Seo de Urgel to Barcelona - before boarding a train to Madrid where Carrington suffered a psychotic episode and was committed to Dr. Morales' sanitarium in Santander. Yarrow was able to continue to New York, where she reconnected with the network of Surrealist artists who now congregated around the New School for Social Research. Yarrow's ceramics were exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in April 1943, alongside drawings by Max Ernst, and her printmaking was also shown in an early retrospective of Atelier 17 - entitled New Directions in Gravure - held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944. Furthermore, Yarrow featured in Peggy Guggenheim's 'The Women' at the Art of this Century Gallery in June, 1945, appearing alongside Lee Krasner, Kay Sage, Alice Rahon, and Louise Bourgeois, who later immortalised Yarrow in her personages series (Portrait of C.Y., 1947-9, National Gallery of Canada)

Although Yarrow received a great deal of critical acclaim from these shows, she slowly withdrew from the New York art world, ultimately returning to Europe in 1948, where she established a studio in London and continued to produce ceramics. In June 1950, an exhibition of her work was held at the Hanover Gallery, London, and her ceramics were shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1952. Yarrow featured in various group exhibitions alongside Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie at the Marjorie Parr Gallery during the 1960s, but lead a progressively reclusive life and destroyed much of her work and correspondence. As a result of this, her work is extremely rare, although a small cache of works were discovered in Yarrow's home after her death in 1990.