Conroy Maddox

Conroy Maddox (1912–2005) was one of the most committed British Surrealists of the twentieth century. A painter, collagist, writer and lecturer, he was a central figure in the Birmingham Surrealist movement and remained devoted to Surrealism for more than seventy years. His friend Desmond Morris described him as “the most undiluted, unwavering Surrealist” in Britain.

Born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, Maddox discovered Surrealism in 1935 and quickly rejected conventional academic painting in favour of a more radical approach based on chance, dream imagery, found objects and the unconscious. In 1938 he formally joined the British Surrealist Group and became closely associated with artists and writers including Roland Penrose, E.L.T. Mesens, Man Ray and Hans Bellmer.

His work of the late 1930s and 1940s ranged from painting and collage to photography, assemblage and the Surrealist object. Works such as Onanistic Typewriter (1940), in which the keys of a typewriter are replaced by spikes, demonstrate his deliberately subversive use of familiar objects, while The Cloak of Secrecy (1940) reflects his interest in unsettling, dreamlike transformations of the human figure.

Maddox remained committed to Surrealism long after many of his contemporaries had moved in other directions. During the 1970s his paintings often adopted a cooler, more enigmatic language influenced by Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, creating deserted interiors and architectural spaces charged with unease. Tate acquired Passage de l’Opéra(1971), one of the best-known works from this period.

He also continued to experiment with automatic and chance-based techniques. Among these was écrémage, a water-based blotting process that allowed forms to emerge unpredictably from the surface, extending the tradition of Surrealist techniques developed earlier by artists such as Max Ernst and Wolfgang Paalen.

Maddox was included in numerous important exhibitions devoted to Surrealism, among them Dada and Surrealism Reviewed at the Hayward Gallery in 1978 and Surrealism: Two Private Eyes at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. His importance to the Birmingham group was also recognised in Surrealism in Birmingham 1935–1954, alongside artists including William Gear and Desmond Morris.

The Redfern Gallery presented Conroy Maddox: Paintings, Collages and Works on Paper in 2017, bringing together work from several decades of his career and reflecting the gallery’s continuing interest in British Surrealism.

Maddox’s work is held in major public collections including Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland. His long career stands as one of the clearest examples in Britain of an artist maintaining an unwavering commitment to the principles and possibilities of Surrealism.