1995.12

Edward Stowe Akeley

Courtesy of Edward Stowe Akeley

Mixografia

1974

20th Century

80

Sesión espiritísta likely incorrect, but work sold at auction under it

21-3/8 in

28 in

Revolutionary Images (2026)

Descriptive Label

"Surrealist painter and writer, Leonora Carrington was born in a remote corner of Lancashire, England. Her father was a wealthy textile manufacturer and her mother the daughter of an Irish country doctor. Carrington’s childhood was spent rebelling against her family and her Catholic upbringing. At the age of 20 she met Max Ernst at a party in London in 1937 and they took up a life together at St. Martin d’Ardéche near Lyons. During this period, Carrington developed an artistic vocabulary of magical animals and birds that give her paintings an air of mystery and fantasy. In 1940, Ernst was arrested as an enemy alien, and Carrington fled to Spain where she suffered a mental collapse. She moved to Mexico in 1942 and became one of the central figures in a group of European exiled painters and writers in Mexico City. In the early 1970’s Carrington became one of the founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico. Pintora y escritora surrealista, nacida en la remota localidad de Lancashire, en Inglaterra. Su padre era un acaudalado empresario textil y su madre la hija de un médico rural irlandés. Carrington pasó su infancia rebelándose contra su familia y la educación católica que trataban de impartirle. En 1937, cuando tenía 20 años, conoció a Max Ernst en una fiesta en Londres y ellos iniciaron una vida en común en St. Martin d'Ardeche, cerca de Lyons, Francia. Durante este período, Carrington desarrolló un repertorio artístico de animales y pájaros mágicos, que le dieron a sus pinturas un aire de misterio y fantasia. En 1940, Ernst fue arrestado por ser considerado un extranjero enemigo y ella se escapó a España donde sufrió un colapso psíquico. Se mudó a México en 1942 y se transformó en una de las figuras centrales de un grupo de pintores y escritores europeos exiliados en el Distrito Federal. ----- ----- From Wikipedia: Born: April 6, 1917, Lancaster, Lancashire, England Occupation: Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (born April 6, 1917) is a British-born artist, a surrealist painter and while living in Mexico, a novelist. Early life Carrington was born in Clayton Green, South Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Her father was a wealthy industrialist, her mother was Irish. She also had an Irish nanny, Mary Cavanaugh, who told her Gaelic tales. Leonora had three brothers. Places she lived as a child included a house called Crooksey Hall.[1] Educated by governesses, tutors and nuns, she was expelled from many schools for her rebellious behavior until her family sent her to Florence where she attended Mrs. Penrose's Academy of Art. Her father was opposed to an artist's career for her, but her mother encouraged her. She returned to England and was presented at Court, but according to her, she brought a book to read by Aldous Huxley Eyeless in Gaza (1936), instead. In London she attended the Chelsea School of Art and joined the Academy of Amédée Ozenfant.[2] She saw her first Surrealist painting in a Left Bank gallery in 1927 (when she was ten years old), and met many surrealists, including Paul Eluard. (She was already familiar with surrealism from Herbert Read's book.) Leonora Carrington found little encouragement from her family to forge an artistic career. Matthew Gale, curator at the Tate Modern singled out Surrealist poet and patron Edward James as the only champion of her work in Britain. James bought many of her paintings, and in 1947 arranged a show for her work at Pierre Matisse’s Gallery in New York. Some works are still hanging at his former family home now West Dean College in West Dean, West Sussex. [3] Max Ernst Carrington saw Max Ernst's work in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London where she was immediately attracted to the Surrealist artist before actually meeting him. She met Max Ernst at a party in London in 1937. The artists bonded and returned to Paris together where Ernst promptly separated from his wife. In 1938 they left Paris and settled in Saint Martin d'Ardèche in the Provence region, of the south of France. The new couple collaborated and supported each other's artistic development. With the outbreak of World War II, Max Ernst was arrested by French authorities for being a ""hostile alien"". Thanks to the intercession of Paul Eluard, and other friends including the American journalist Varian Fry he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the French occupation by the Nazis, he was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, he managed to escape and flee to America with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, a sponsor of the arts.[4] After the Germans invaded their French village and took Ernst in custody in 1940, a devastated Carrington fled to Spain. Paralyzing anxiety and growing delusions culminated in a final breakdown at the British embassy in Madrid. Her parents intervened and had her institutionalized. She was given cardiazol, a powerful shock-inducing drug. When released into the care of a nurse who took her to Lisbon Carrington ran away and sought refuge in the Mexican Embassy. Ernst meanwhile had been extricated from Europe with Peggy Guggenheim, but he and Carrington had experienced so much misery that they were unable to reconnect. Mexico Carrington after having escaped in Lisbon, arranged passage out of Europe with a Mexican diplomat who was a friend of Picasso. In fact, she married the diplomat as part of the travel arrangements. Events from that period would inform her work perhaps forever. She lives and works in Mexico and New York. ""I didn't have time to be anyone's muse...I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist."" --Leonora Carrington, 1983 In Mexico she later married Emericko Weisz and would have two children. The first son - Gabriel Weisz is an intellectual and a poet and the second son Pablo Weisz is a surrealist artist and a doctor. Career The first important exhibition of her work appeared in 1947 at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City. Leonora Carrington was invited to show her work in an international exhibition of Surrealism where she was the only female English professional painter. She became a celebrity almost overnight. In Mexico she authored and has had published several books. Leonora Carrington is Dead - NYT May 27, 2011 Leonora Carrington, a British-born Surrealist and onetime romantic partner of Max Ernst whose paintings depicted women and half-human beasts floating in a dreamscape of images drawn from myth, folklore, religious ritual and the occult, died on Wednesday in Mexico City, where she lived. She was 94. The cause was pneumonia, Wendi Norris, the co-owner of Frey Norris Contemporary and Modern gallery in San Francisco, said. Ms. Carrington, one of the last living links to the world of André Breton, Man Ray and Miró, was an art student when she encountered Ernst’s work for the first time at the International Surrealism Exhibition in London in 1936. A year later she met him at a party. The two fell in love and ran off to Paris, where Ernst, more than 25 years her senior, left his wife and introduced Ms. Carrington to the Surrealist circle. “From Max I had my education,” she told The Guardian of London in 2007. “I learned about art and literature. He taught me everything.” She became acquainted with the likes of Picasso, Dalí and Tanguy. With her striking looks and adventurous spirit, she seemed like the ideal muse, but the role did not suit. Miró once handed her a few coins and told her to run out and buy him a pack of cigarettes. “I gave it back and said if he wanted cigarettes, he could bloody well get them himself,” she told The Guardian. “I wasn’t daunted by any of them.” Encouraged by Ernst, she painted and wrote. In 1939 she produced her first truly Surrealist work, “The Inn of the Dawn Horse (Self-Portrait).” Now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it shows an androgynous-looking woman seated in a room with a rocking horse on the wall, extending her hand to a hyena. Her interest in animal imagery, myth and occult symbolism deepened after she moved to Mexico and entered into a creative partnership with the émigré Spanish artist Remedios Varo. Together the two studied alchemy, the kabbalah and the mytho-historical writings Popol Vuh from what is now Guatemala. “She was a seeker and a searcher,” said Whitney Chadwick, a professor of art at San Francisco State University and the author of “Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement”(1991). “In her work, she always sought to define moments when one plane of consciousness blends with another.” In the 1940s and ’50s Ms. Carrington made a small number of carved wooden sculptures, and in her 80s and 90s she produced large-scale bronze sculptures of fantastical quasi-human forms, both comic and horrific, like “How Doth the Little Crocodile.” Located on one of Mexico City’s most prominent avenues, that work depicts a lizardlike oarsman steering a crocodile vessel and its four lizardy passengers on a voyage to places unknown. Leonora Carrington was born on April 6, 1917, in Clayton Green, Lancashire. Her father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, and she grew up in a grand house, Crookhey Hall, where her Irish nanny entranced her with folk tales. Her parents, both Roman Catholic, sent her to convent schools, from which she was expelled for eccentric behavior. At their wits’ end, they sent her to study at Mrs. Penrose’s Academy of Art in Florence. On returning to Britain, she enrolled in the art school recently established by the French modernist Amédée Ozenfant. Her father was dead set against her becoming an artist and had insisted that she be presented as a debutante at the court of George V. Her mother was at least mildly encouraging, and, little suspecting the impact it might have, gave her a copy of Herbert Read’s new book on Surrealism, published in 1936. It had a reproduction of a Max Ernst work on the cover. After Ernst left his wife in 1938, he and Ms. Carrington left Paris and settled in Provence, near Avignon, but the outbreak of World War II put an end to their idyll. Ernst was imprisoned, first by the French and then by the Germans, and Ms. Carrington suffered a breakdown. She described the abusive treatment she received at a mental hospital in Spain in a memoir, “Down Below.” She and Ernst never reunited. After entering into a marriage of convenience with Renato Leduc, a Mexican writer and friend of Picasso’s, Ms. Carrington made her way to New York, where she had solo shows at the Pierre Matisse Gallery and was included in group shows at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery and at the Museum of Modern Art. After her marriage was dissolved, she moved to Mexico and lived in Mexico City for the rest of her life, with interruptions. There she married Emeric Weisz, a Hungarian photographer who had been Robert Capa’ s darkroom manager in Paris. It was Mr. Weisz who spirited three cardboard valises filled with negatives of Capa photographs of the Spanish Civil War from Paris to Marseilles, where he was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Algiers. The negatives, believed lost, resurfaced in Mexico City in 2008. Ms. Carrington is survived by their two sons, Gabriel Weisz-Carrington of Mexico City and Pablo Weisz-Carrington of Midlothian, Va., and five grandchildren. Ms. Carrington wrote short stories and novels in the same Surrealist vein as her artwork. In 1988, Dutton published “The House of Fear: Notes From Down Below,” an anthology of her work, and “The Seventh Horse and Other Tales.” She was the subject of Susan Aberth’s “Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, published in 2004 ."