In their day they were feted as two of Britain’s most exciting and important surrealists, but few people today are familiar with the work of Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff.
Organisers of an exhibition this year want to change that and are bringing together works from public and private collections for what will be the first show in 20 years devoted to the pair, who were described by a critic in Time magazine as creators of “the goofiest paintings London has ever seen”.
“They are not terribly well known now and I think they should be,” said the co-curator Hope Wolf. “At the time they were very highly regarded.”
Pailthorpe, a surgeon, and Mednikoff, an artist, began collaborating in 1935 and spent the rest of their lives together, making art not for its own sake but as a kind of lifelong psychoanalytical research project.
They were renowned in surrealist art circles and praised by André Breton, the leader of the movement, as “the best and most truly surrealist” of all British artists. Work by Pailthorpe and Mednikoff was included in a show at Moma in New York and they had a solo show at the Guggenheim Jeune in Cork Street in London.
Some critics found the vivid and wildly experimental artworks tricky, but others “were taken aback by how extraordinarily original they thought the work was”, said Wolf. “They have mixed reviews: some just don’t know what to do with the work; some really loved them.”
In 1936 they exhibited in what was a landmark surrealist show at the Burlington Galleries in London. Four years later they split from the movement because they did not want to comply with the instruction to exhibit only in surrealist exhibitions.
Pailthorpe and Mednikoff lived together for four decades, in Port Isaac, Cornwall, in London, in the US during the war and latterly in East Sussex – they opened an antiques shop in Battle – but they are not thought to have been in a romantic relationship.
She was 23 years older than him and a good deal taller, and they may have been role-playing a mother-son relationship. Pailthorpe died in 1971 aged 87 and Mednikoff died a few months later.
Wolf said there were “lots of mysteries about them” but they “mostly had a very dedicated, almost professional research relationship”. Some might have viewed them as eccentric, Wolf said, but that did not mean their work should not be taken seriously.
They are little known but do have their followers: it is said that Malcolm McLaren once attributed to Pailthorpe his wish to be a punk rocker.
Pailthorpe, an expert in criminal psychology, was a timid woman but also a rebel, said Rosie Cooper, the director of exhibitions at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea and another co-curator of the show. “She is always kicking against convention.”
The exhibition borrows from public and private collections, sometimes pairing the artworks with psychoanalytical interpretation.
Visitors might be surprised, said Cooper. “Some of the works are quite easy to locate within a canonical history of surrealist practice and some of them … you just look at them and think: where did that come from? They are amazing.”
In 1938 Pailthorpe became fascinated by childbirth from the perspective of the baby and drew and painted lots of happy foetuses in the womb.
Wolf and Cooper believe Pailthorpe and Mednikoff have fallen through the gaps of art history. One reason was their decision to leave the surrealist group; another is because they were “people who don’t really fit in very well”.
They had an unconventional way of working and living and did not fit into the normal narratives. But perhaps their time had now come, Cooper said.
“For me, there is something really interesting happening in contemporary painting now that allows for a much more varied output, a much more thoughtful, conceptual, uninhibited style. These artists epitomised that in many ways. We’re just a bit readier now to see their work than we were before.”
• A Tale of Mother’s Bones: Grace Pailthorpe, Reuben Mednikoff and the birth of psychorealism is at the De La Warr Pavilion from 6 October to 20 January; and at Camden Arts Centre next year from 12 April to 23 June.
• This article was amended on 21 August 2018 to clarify that when Hope Wolf called Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff “the goofiest couple in art”, Wolf was calling on a description by a critic in 1939, in Time magazine, who called their art “the goofiest paintings London has ever seen”.
