Breakup
In July 1948 a Short Manifesto from The Surrealist Group in Birmingham was published and signed by twelve Birmingham artists, including Maddox and Mellor but missing major figures such as Bridgewater, Morris and the Melvilles. Its call for the formation of an "active surrealist group" to reject the "patriotic myths, official pedagogy, the debris of moral rationing which constitutes much of the art, poetry and philosophy of our time" was not without irony though: English surrealism was increasingly looking like a spent force and the manifesto had a far from galvanising effect on local artists.
As the 1950s wore on the group drifted apart. Bridgewater moved to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1951 to look care for her ill mother and disabled sister, ceasing artistic activity for almost two decades. Mellor and Morris both moved to Oxford to continue in education. John Melville remained in Birmingham, though he withdrew from public exhibition after the failure of his 1951 exhibition at London's Hannover Gallery and was increasingly attracted away from surrealism to forms such as still life and portraiture.
Maddox himself, frustrated at his inability to reinvigorate English Surrealism from Birmingham, moved to London in 1955, where he continued to advocate the surrealist cause throughout the rest of the 20th century. In 1978, Maddox made contact with the surrealist revival on the West Coast of the U.S., and members of that movement visited London to show at Maddox's Surrealism Unlimited exhibit. The Arsenal anthology (1989), was dedicated to Maddox.
Read more about this topic: Birmingham Surrealists, History