Research B4 (1)

Leonora Carrington

1. She is an English-born Mexican Surrealist artist
2. She was raised in a wealthy Roman Catholic family on a large estate called Crookhey Hall. Carrington’s Irish mother and Irish nanny introduced her to Celtic mythology and Irish folklore.
3. From an early age Carrington rebelled against both her family and her religious upbringing. 
4. Carrington’s parents let her move to London to pursue art at Amédée Ozenfant’s academy. There she encountered Surrealism for the first time. 
5. She met Max Ernst in 1937 and soon became romantically involved with him. When Carrington, just 20 years old, ran off to Paris to live with 46-year-old Ernst, her father was shocked and subsequently disowned her.
6. In Paris, Carrington met the wider Surrealist circle including  André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso. Then She created her earliest Surrealist works in the next two years, including her well-known Self-Portrait: The Inn of the Dawn Horse 
7. In 1938 she and Ernst moved to the south of France, to a villa in the town of Saint-Martin d’Ardèche. She not only painted but also wrote prolifically while they lived there, authoring Surrealist short stories like The House of Fear (1938)
8. Until 1940, when Ernst was interned as an enemy alien in a Nazi prison camp. Utterly distraught, Carrington left France for Spain and suffered a mental breakdown in 1940. 
9. She was hospitalized against her will in a mental institution in Santander, Spain. She wrote of the harsh treatment she endured there in her book Down Below (1944). 
10. She left New York City for Mexico in 1942, became a Mexican citizen, and settled in Mexico City, where she lived the rest of her life.
11. She forged a close friendship and working relationship with Spanish artist Remedios Varo, a Surrealist who had also been an acquaintance of Carrington’s in Paris before the war. 
12. Some of Carrington’s works from the 1940s and ’50s contain groupings of three women, such as Three Women Around the Table (1951); they are presumed to be paintings of herself, Varo, and Kati Horna, another friend. 
13. Carrington flourished in Mexico and painted fantastical compositions that portrayed metamorphoses.
14. Carrington flourished in Mexico and painted fantastical compositions that portrayed metamorphoses.
15. In 1947 the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City hosted a large solo exhibition of her work. 
16. she received a government commission to create a large mural for the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, which she titled El Mundo Mágico de los Mayas (completed 1963; “The Magical World of the Maya”). 
17. In the 1990s Carrington began creating large bronze sculptures, a selection of which were displayed publicly in 2008 for several months on the streets of Mexico City.
18. Carrington made history in 2005 when her painting Juggler (1954) sold at auction for $713,000, which was believed to be the highest price paid for a work by a living Surrealist artist. 
19. She was the subject of many exhibitions in Mexico and the United States—and after 1990 in England as well. 
20. When she died at age 94, Carrington was believed to be the last of the         Surrealists.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonora-Carrington

Artist inspirations/ style/ material 

-Carrington was inspired by the realism groups’ idea of unconscious mind and dream imagery. To these ideas she added her own unique blend of cultural influences, including Celtic literature, Renaissance painting, Central American folk art, medieval alchemy, and Jungian psychology.

-Carrington’s art is populated by hybrid figures that are half-human and half-animal, or combinations of various fantastic beasts that range from fearsome to humorous. 

-Through this signature imagery, she explored themes of transformation and identity in an ever-changing world.

-Carrington’s work touches on ideas of sexual identity yet avoids the frequent Surrealist stereotyping of women as objects of male desire. Instead, she drew on her life and friendships to represent women’s self-perceptions, the bonds between women of all ages, and female figures within male-dominated environments and histories.

-She worked in oil painting, traditional bronze and cast iron sculpture, and mixed-media sculpture that incorporated wood, glass, and iron objects.

https://www.artsy.net/artist/leonora-carrington