Conroy Maddox

A founding member of British Surrealism in Birmingham, England, Conroy Maddox embraced the rebellious spirit of the movement and remained loyal to it his entire life, producing 2,000 paintings, collages, and sculptures. Sourcing their imagery from the depths of the unconscious, his paintings are regularly included in major surveys of Surrealist art. Along with other Birmingham Surrealists, Maddox refused to participate in the pivotal “International Surrealist Exhibition” in London in 1936, claiming that the majority of British artists chosen for the exhibition—including Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland—were not true proponents of the movement. He did attend the exhibition, however, where he met leading continental artists like André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Max Ernst, whose dreamlike, loosely associative paintings greatly influenced his own work. Maddox’s later paintings drew inspiration from Giorgio de Chirico’s enigmatic representations of space. The artist’s infamous sculpture Onanistic Typewriter I (1940) features typewriter keys pierced by upturned pins.