Multiple-headed deities, strange woodland feasts, plants with sprite-like faces, and worlds floating on animals’ backs are just a few of the dreamlike occurrences in the work of Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). The British-Mexican artist, born into an upper-class family in Lancashire, was fascinated by the notion of “other.” She immersed herself in fairytales and folk stories by the likes of Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll and rebelled against the strict expectations of high-society women in England.
Carrington traveled extensively, soaking up inspiration from classical sculptures and Renaissance paintings in Florence, where she studied art, then attending the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London when she was 19. It wasn’t long before she was off to Paris, where the movement had taken wing. And fittingly, this month, a large-scale survey of Carrington’s work opens at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, showcasing numerous paintings and drawings created throughout her career.
Surrealism is virtually inextricable from Paris in the first half of the 20th century, when luminaries like Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and André Breton—the movement’s founder—convened and shared ideas. The excitement attracted younger artists from other parts of the world, such as Carrington and Spanish painter Remedios Varo. There, Carrington met German artist Max Ernst, with whom she struck up a romantic partnership for a period of about three years—a time during which each of their practices was influenced by the other.
The younger women artists who associated with the Surrealism movement were sometimes deprecatingly referred to as femme enfants, or “women children,” as their role was seen as serving 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 immigrating to Mexico to escape the turmoil of World War II, Carrington and Varo became good friends, sharing an interest in cooking, alchemy, and cosmic forces. While they painted separately, their works share this interest in the esoteric and arcane. Carrington was particularly interested in ideas around transformation, with domestic spaces such as the kitchen or bedroom serving as settings filled with magic, awe, and gratification.
Leonora Carrington opens on February 18 and continues through July 19. Find more on the museum’s website.
