The work of the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington will be celebrated in a new exhibition at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, West Sussex this summer. Carrington (1917-2011) was a British-born artist who emigrated to Mexico, and remained relatively unknown in the UK until after her death.
Her oeuvre includes paintings, sculpture, textiles, jewellery, set and costume design, and writing, although she is best known for her surrealist paintings. She is sometimes compared to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who was her friend and contemporary, and who was similarly overlooked and overshadowed by male artists in her lifetime.
Like Kahlo, Carrington’s compelling visual artwork was inextricably linked to her sometimes harrowing life experiences and rebellious spirit. She was born into a wealthy Lancashire family and educated at a series of convent schools, where she failed to fit in and was expelled twice. She was finally educated by tutors after a brief spell at art school.
Attempts to introduce her to the London debutante scene to meet an eligible bachelor when she was 19 similarly failed, and she ran away to Paris with the German artist Max Ernst after meeting him at a party. This caused an irreparable rift with her father, who was always opposed to Leonora’s interest in art; although her mother was more supportive.
The pair settled in southern France, and supported each other in their artistic endeavours. However, the German-born Ernst was accused of being a ‘hostile alien’ after the outbreak of World War Two and arrested by the French authorities. Carrington subsequently left France for Madrid, where the stressful event led to a psychotic breakdown.
Carrington was admitted to an asylum and endured brutal electric shock therapy and barbiturate drug treatments. After she was deemed fit, her parents arranged for her to go to an asylum in South Africa, but with the help of friends she fled to the USA, where she made a marriage of convenience.
After picking up her artistic career in New York, Carrington travelled to Mexico, where she spent the majority of the rest of her life. She continued to practise as an artist and refused to take up the conventional role of female muse, despite remarrying another artist and having many social connections and friends in the artistic community.
Carrington’s work often explores and questions the female experience, and this possibly led her to remain under the radar during her lifetime. However, over the past couple of decades her profile as an artist has risen, and there have been several exhibitions of her work in Mexico and across the world.
The journalist Joanna Moorhead is a cousin of Carrington, although she only got to know the artist when she was in her 80s and 90s. Moorhead has since written two biographical books about Carrington, and has also curated the latest exhibition at Newlands House.
In an article for The Guardian, Moorhead writes: “As with Kahlo, Carrington’s work was always intertwined with her own experiences: she once told me that everything she did, both her visual art and her writing, was laced with her biography.”
“Another reason why she is in vogue today is that her concerns – unusual and even eccentric in her own times – are now ubiquitous. Ecology, feminism, the interconnectedness of all life forms, spirituality outside of organised religion: today we’re all aware of these issues, but they were front and centre for Carrington 80 years ago.”
She continues: ““Great” artists are always experimental; they push boundaries, try out new ideas, shake up the way they do things. They’re not looking for a comfort zone; they’re curious, constantly on the lookout for challenges.”
Moorhead also explains that Carrington’s friend and patron Edward James wrote in an essay in 1975: “She has never relinquished her love of experimentation; the results being that she has been able to diversify and explore a hundred or more techniques for the expression of her creative powers.”
“She continues to try new media which help her to clothe her vital ideas with fresh shapes.” The exhibition will showcase works from a five-decade career, with most works on loan from the Leonora Carrington Council and being shown in the UK for the first time.
The exhibition, ‘Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary’ at Newlands House Gallery will run from 12 July to 26 October 2024.
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