British painter, writer, female Surrealist, Mexican artist and eco-feminist, these are just some of the terms used to characterize Leonora Carrington, but her art and life resist any strict definition.
Leonora defied her aristocratic upbringing to run away and join the Surrealist ‘circus’ in Paris, and through the tumult of the Second World War found her way to Mexico City. While she died in 2011, the legacy of her untamable spirit and creative mysticism reigns on: inspiring artists, writers, and musicians from Madonna and Björk’s video for Bedtime Story in 1995, to Tim Walker and Tilda Swinton’s i-D magazine spread in 2017. Her paintings and stories serve as visual punctuations of the changes and thresholds Leonora transgressed, and provide keys to unlocking her mythic ‘story’.
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), Private diary , Hazelwood, St Martin d’Ardèche, January 1935-July 1939, autograph manuscript of 43 octavo pages on a fragment of a British diary for 1935. Sold at Drouot (Pierre Bergé auction house) on October 9, 2020, for €33,000. © Adagp, Paris, 2020
From Debutante to Femme Enfant When Leonora was born in 1917 in Lancashire, her parents had prearranged the path before her, but from a young age she had other ideas. Expelled from numerous catholic boarding schools in England, her parents nonetheless tried to wrestle with her wilful…
com.dsi.gazette.Article : 19602
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