Leonora Carrington

Attracted to surrealism for its anti-establishment values that contrasted entirely with her bourgeoise family, Carrington, like so many women involved with the surrealist movement, rejected surrealist concepts of the femme-fatale and woman-as-muse, never woman-as-artist, saying “I thought it was bullshit. I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse, I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist”.

Her experimentation with sexuality and gender roles and her interest in magic, alchemy and spirituality, along with the biographical inspiration for many of her works, infuse her art with a level of narrative unseen in her contemporaries, especially that of make surrealists’ who preferred to characterise women in a specific, sexually alluring, way.

After moving to Paris in 1937 with German artist Max Ernst, Carrington delved deeper into surrealism in her paintings and writing, publishing her first short story, The House of Fear in 1938 and exhibiting her work in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris the same year. The outbreak of World War II interrupted her progress and she was forced to flee Pairs alone after Ernst was interned as an enemy alien. A subsequent nervous breakdown led to her institutionalisation in Spain and to her parents attempting to transfer her to a sanitorium in South Africa. En route, however, she escaped and eventually made her way through New York and on to Mexico where she eventually settled in 1942.

A popular choice for exiled artists, once in Mexico Carrington was able to reengage with the surrealists and continue with her work leading to her first major exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City in 1947 from which she received international critical acclaim.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Carrington continued to write and exhibit her work internationally with her success never waning. She also became involved in the feminist movement and was a founding member of the Mexican women’s liberation movement.