Multi-headed gods, strange forest festivals, plants with fairytale faces and worlds floating on the backs of animals are just some of the dream-like events in the work of Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Born into an upper-class family in Lancashire, the British-Mexican artist was fascinated by the concept of ‘other’. She immersed herself in fairy tales and folk tales by Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll, among others, and rebelled against the strict expectations of women from high society in England.
Carrington traveled extensively and found inspiration in classical sculpture and Renaissance painting in Florence, where she studied art and then became the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London when she was 19. It wasn’t long before she left for Paris, where the movement had taken off. And fittingly, a major retrospective of Carrington’s work opens this month Museum du Luxembourg in Paris, where numerous paintings and drawings made during her career are on display.
Surrealism is almost inextricably linked to Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, when greats such as Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and André Breton – the founder of the movement – met and shared ideas. The excitement attracted younger artists from other parts of the world, such as Carrington and the Spanish painter Remedios Varo. There Carrington met the German artist Max Ernst, with whom she entered into a romantic partnership for a period of approximately three years – a time during which each of their practices was influenced by the other.
The younger female artists who associated themselves with the Surrealist movement were sometimes referred to disapprovingly female childrenor ‘female children’, because their role was seen as muses for the male artists. Carrington once said, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse…I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”
And after emigrating to Mexico to escape the turmoil of World War II, Carrington and Varo good friendswho share an interest in cooking, alchemy and cosmic forces. Although they painted separately, their works share this interest in the esoteric and mysterious. Carrington was particularly interested in ideas around transformation, where domestic spaces such as the kitchen or bedroom served as environments full of magic, awe and satisfaction.
Leonora Carrington opens on February 18 and runs through July 19. For more information, visit the museum’s website website.
