44 Facts About Leonora Carrington

Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born, naturalised Mexican surrealist painter and novelist.

Leonora Carrington lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s.

Mary Leonora Carrington was born on 6 April 1917 at Westwood House in Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley, Lancashire, England, into a Roman Catholic family.

Leonora Carrington's father, Harold Wylde Carrington, was a wealthy textile manufacturer, and her mother, Marie, was from Ireland.

Leonora Carrington, briefly, attended St Mary's convent school in Ascot.

Leonora Carrington's father opposed her career as an artist, but her mother encouraged her.

Leonora Carrington returned to England and was presented at Court but, according to her, because she had no intention of being "sold to the highest bidder" she brought a copy of Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza to read instead.

Leonora Carrington was one of the first students at the Academy, the others being Stella Snead and Ursula Goldfinger, under the instruction of Sari Dienes, who co-directed the school.

Leonora Carrington became familiar with Surrealism from a copy of Herbert Read's book, Surrealism, given to her by her mother, but she received little encouragement from her family to forge an artistic career.

In 1936 Leonora Carrington saw the work of the German surrealist Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and was attracted to the Surrealist artist before she even met him.

In 1937 Leonora Carrington met Ernst at a party at the Goldfinger's with Sari Dienes, who was a friend of Ernst, held in London.

The portrait was not her first Surrealist work; between 1937 and 1938 Leonora Carrington painted Self-Portrait, called The Inn of the Dawn Horse, now exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Leonora Carrington managed to escape and flee to the United States with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, who was a sponsor of the arts.

Leonora Carrington stayed with family friends in Madrid until her paralyzing anxiety and delusions led to a psychotic break and she was admitted into an asylum.

Leonora Carrington was treated with Cardiazol shock therapy and Luminal.

Leonora Carrington was released from the asylum into the care of a keeper, and was told that her parents had decided to send her to a sanatorium in South Africa.

Leonora Carrington went to the Mexican Embassy to find Renato Leduc, a poet and the Mexican Ambassador.

When Leonora Carrington first came to Mexico she was preceded by the success of surrealist exhibitions which allowed her to create many connections within the surrealist movement.

In 1973 Leonora Carrington designed Mujeres conciencia, a poster for the Women's Liberation movement in Mexico, depicting a 'new Eve'.

Leonora Carrington frequently spoke about women's "legendary powers" and the need for women to take back "the rights that belonged to them".

Leonora Carrington was adopted as a femme-enfant by the Surrealists because of her rebelliousness against her upper-class upbringing.

Leonora Carrington primarily focused on psychic freedom in the belief that such freedom cannot be achieved until political freedom is accomplished.

Leonora Carrington later married Emerico Weisz, born in Hungary in 1911, a photographer and the darkroom manager for Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.

Leonora Carrington died on 25 May 2011, aged 94, in a hospital in Mexico City as a result of complications arising from pneumonia.

Leonora Carrington's remains were buried at Panteon Ingles in Mexico City.

Leonora Carrington instead focused on magical realism and alchemy and used autobiographical detail and symbolism as the subjects of her paintings.

Leonora Carrington's work is identified and compared with the surrealist movement.

In Self-Portrait, Leonora Carrington reflects on her own identity, associating herself with both the horse and hyena.

Three years after being released from the asylum and with the encouragement of Andre Breton, Leonora Carrington wrote about her psychotic experience in her memoir Down Below.

Leonora Carrington created art to depict her experience, such as her Portrait of Dr Morales and Map of Down Below.

Leonora Carrington's views situated motherhood as a key experience to being a woman.

Leonora Carrington was invited to show her work in an international exhibition of Surrealism, where she was the only female English professional painter.

Leonora Carrington's work was exhibited alongside pieces by her close friends, the Spanish painter Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.

In 2013 Leonora Carrington was the subject of a major retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Leonora Carrington often used codes of words to dictate interpretation in her artwork.

Leonora Carrington contributed to the 1973 Mexican horror film The Mansion of Madness directed by Juan Lopez Moctezuma, loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.

Leonora Carrington supervised the artistic design for the sets and costumes, with one of her sons, Gabriel Weisz.

The repeated appearance of a white horse, Leonora Carrington's alter ego, and the elaborate surreal feasts and costumes show her influence and vision.

Leonora Carrington painted portraits of the telenovela actor Enrique Alvarez Felix, son of actress Maria Felix, a friend of Leonora Carrington's first husband.

In 2015, Leonora Carrington was honoured through a Google Doodle commemorating her 98th birthday.

Leonora Carrington demonstrated that women should be seen as artists in their own right and not to be used as muses by male artists.

Leonora Carrington discussed the art in her home and life as a surrealist.

In November 2023, a posthumous ceremony celebrating Leonora Carrington's works was held in the Senate of the Republic, the upper house of the Mexican Congress.

The sculpture El jaguar de la noche was donated by the Museo Leonora Carrington to be displayed in the Senate Building.