Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art

Susan L Aberth
Lund Humphries

I first encountered the work of Leonora Carrington a couple of years ago in Desmond Morris' book 'The British Surrealists' and I was both blown away by what I saw and stunned that I hadn't heard of her before so I needed to rectify that asap, but circumstances conspired to keep this book on my shelf for the next while, unread beyond a few thumbs through to admire the pretties.

Carrington was born on 6th April 1917 in Clayton Green nr Chorley, South Lancasire to a rich industrial family and raised, mostly, in a country manor in Cockerham nr Lancaster.  Dyslexic, ambidextrous and fiercely independent he was expelled from a number of schools until, against her parent's wishes, she enrolled in a London Art school where, following the June 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, Carrington became besotted with, first the art of and then the person of, Max Ernst, soon relocating with him to Paris and being disowned by her parents in the process.

In Paris she was immersed at the very heart of the Surrealist Movement where her artistic prowess was celebrated.  Seperated from Ernst during the war she left France for Spain where she was hospitalised with mental health issues before fleeing war-torn Europe from New York and then, in 1943, to Mexico where she was to spend the rest of her life.

It was in Mexico that Carrington's art was to find it's true focus.  Inspired by the indigenous peoples grip on their magical traditions and it's interweaving with Catholicism which, combined with her own long established occult interests fostered by a mother and grandmother steeped in Irish mythology and a long standing love of James Stephens' folkloric novel 'The Crock of Gold', allowed her imagination to flourish. She took these influences, her love of the culinary - a love often expressed in a uniquely surrealist manner - and her feminist ideals and melded them to express her own darkly romantic, often whimsical and always visionary artistry.

In her monograph Susan Aberth provides a wealth of fascinating biograpical information and much insightful commentary on the work highlighting how Carrington's personal friendships and her obsessions were expressed.  The text does come to a rather jarring close when the artist arries in her later years, which was a shame as advancing age was a celebrated feature of Carrington's later work, most notably in her novel, 'The Hearing Trumpet' of which we hear not a peep.  The monograph's true focus though is where it should be and the book is crammed throughout with beautifully reproduced and often full page images that allow one to to lose hours in it's pages and provides a suitable testimonial to an artist who followed her own idiosyncratic path.

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