Explore: Agathe Sorel

(1935 - )

Born in Budapest, Agathe Sorel first studied art in Hungary from 1955, before fleeing from the Hungarian Revolution to London in 1956, where she enrolled at the Camberwell College of Art to study printmaking. In 1958 she won the Gulbenkian Scholarship and moved to Paris to study at the Ecoles des Beaux Arts, the Sorbonne and etching under S. W. Hayter at Atelier 17. Sorel set up a print workshop in Fulham with her husband, the painter and designer Gabor Sitkey in 1960. Her first solo exhibition was at Curwen Gallery, London, in 1965. That same year she was a Founder member of Printmakers' Council and later Chairman from 1981 to 1983. Alongside her practice, she taught at Camberwell and Maidstone Colleges (from 1960) and Goldsmiths College of Art (from 1966). Her 1989 major exhibition ‘Space Engravings & other works by Agathe Sorel’, at the Herbert Read Gallery, toured to the United States, Sweden and Germany. A solo exhibition was held at the Bradford Museum, Cartwright Hall in 2012.