Stella Snead was a British - but US based - surrealist painter and photographer who died, at the age of 96, in early 2006. Relatively unknown as a surrealist artist, she was taught by Amédée Ozenfant (alongside Leonora Carrington) at his eponymous art school in London from 1936.
There is a long chronology of Stella Snead' life - written in the first person - on the following website:
Which should give an insight into her better than I am able to do briefly. However, my interest is in her photographs a number of which I shall be uploading to www.offthelist.co.uk
Snead's move from painting into photography was triggered by the death of her mother and a renewed wanderlust, in 1956. She settled in India in 1960 and remained there until 1971, when these works were probably taken and developed by Snead. It seems likely that they were used to illustrate any one of the five books that Snead either wrote or was responsible for supplying photographs for. The following is the front cover image of the University of Chicago Press's 'Animals in Four Worlds - Sculptures from India' this is almost certainly a contemporary image to the one above:
(With thanks to both the UCP and Amazon)
There will be a showing of Stella's work that is part of the collection of Katherine Fehl in Weyauwega Wisconsin during the month of November. A first person account of Stella can be found at: http://wegaarts.blogspot.com/
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