Leonora Carrington

On paper, she is Britain’s lost surrealist; an English debutante who cut herself off from her wealthy family, fell in love with Max Ernst and eloped with him to Paris, finding herself in the centre of surrealist movement. Separated from Ernst by war, she later ended up in Mexico, and became one of the country’s most famous adopted artists, as well as a founding member of the women’s liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s. But the thing that struck me first and foremost about trying to piece together Leonora Carrington’s mysterious life story is that it is not unlike trying to grasp the size of the universe, the speed of light or the concept of time. As soon as you think you’ve figured out a piece of it, you realise with trepidation, it’s too vast to fully get your head around.

“I am as mysterious to myself as I am to others”, she once said. That she was. Genius painter, sculptor and writer. Sanguine lover, mother, friend and mentor. Sage, alchemist, psychic, mystic and shaman. Rebel, pioneer and feminist. A battle-hardy yet vulnerable woman who was as painfully aware of her own inner demons as she was of the external ones facing women as a tribe.

See some of their artwork below, click on the images to enlarge them in a new window.