John Melville is one of the forgotten figures of British Surrealism. He was a key member of the Birmingham Surrealists, together with his brother, the art critic Robert Melville (1905-1986), and Conroy Maddox (1912-2005). In its early years the group was distinguished by its opposition to a London-based vision of Surrealism epitomised by the English exhibitors at the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition. The Birmingham group saw this as unauthentic or even anti-Surrealist, preferring instead to build links directly with Surrealism's French heartland. However, he later cooled his stance, joining the Surrealist Group in 1938, and exhibited at the seminal Surrealism Today show at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1940.

Melville’s work reveals the influence of Picasso, whom he had met in Paris, and whose brother, Robert, published Picasso: Master of the Phantom in 1939. His portraiture from this period experiments with sharp-edged, angled faces and bodies, but also rich and sensual curves – as with his Woman with a Mandolin, 1945. They recall the polarised extremity of Picasso’s imaginary women: either menacing praying mantis or luscious bowl of fruit. But the importance of Picasso for Melville lay, it seems, not just in his painting itself, but in his attitude to the art world around him. Picasso may have been revered by the Surrealists but he never became one of them, he always went his own way, that was the model that Melville emulated above all.

With thanks to art historian, Alicia Foster.