Leonora Carrington, “Queria ser Pájaro (I Wanted to be a Bird)”, 1960
Leonora Carrington was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist. Expelled from two schools for her rebellious nature, her family sent her to Mrs Penrose’s Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. In 1927, at the age of ten, she had her first contact with Surrealism, meeting French poet and one of the founders of the movement Paul Éluard. In 1935, Carrington attended the Chelsea School of Art in London for one year, and then transferred to the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts which was established by the modernist painter Amédée Ozenfant.
Leonora Carrington, attracted to Max Ernst’s paintings at the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936, later met Ernnst in 1937 when they bonded and eventually settled in southern France. They supported and coroborated on each other’s artistic endeavors. In 1939, Carrington painted her 1937-1938 “Self Portrait / The Inn of the Dawn Horse”, a dream-like scene with her perched on the edge of a chair facing a hyena with her back to a flying rocking horse. Later in 1939, she painted the “Portrait of Max Ernst”, a surrealist winter scene with Ernst wearing a mauve, feathery coat standing in front of a frozen horse.
Ernst, considered a degenerate artist and arrested by the Nazis, fled to New York with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, who he later married in 1941. Carrington, devastated and having fled to Spain, suffered from a nervous breakdown. She was treeted with powerful drugs, fled from the asylum and sought shelter in the Mexican Embassy. Carrington was helped by Renato Leduc, the Mexican ambassador, who ageed to a marriage of convenience, and took her away to Mexico. After a divorce, she stayed in Mexico, creating a mural named “El Mundo Magico de los Mayas”, influenced by native folk stories. The mural is now residing in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City.
Leonora Carrington was one of the last surviving participants of the Surrealist Movement of the 1930s. She focused on magical realism and alchemy in her artwork and used autobiographical detail and symbolism in her paintings. Carrington was not interested in the writings of Sigmund Freud, as was other participants of surrealism. Carrington was also a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s. She designed “Mujeres Conciencia / Women’s Awareness” in 1973, a poster to the Women’ Liberation Movement, depicting a surrealist new Eve. She understood that psychic freedom and political freedom were both neccessary for women’s emancipation.
