Leonora Carrington

She got married for a second time to photographer Emerico Weisz in 1946. The couple had two sons: Gabrial, a poet and Pablo, a Surrealist artist and a doctor.

She died in a hospital in Mexico City on May 25, 2011.

She was born on April 6, 1917, in Clayton Green in Lancashire, England in a Roman Catholic family of Harold Carrington and Maurie Moorhead Carrington as their only daughter among four children. Her father was an affluent textile magnet.

She was brought up in the family estate, Crookhey Hall, surrounded by animals especially horses. She would listen to Celtic mythology and folktales from her Irish mother and Irish nanny Mary Cavanaugh. Many of these would later find place in her art work.

She was a rebellious child and educated by a string of tutors, nuns and governesses. She faced expulsion from two schools following which her family enrolled her at ‘Mrs Penrose's Academy of Art’ in Florence. Her study of paintings started there and during this time she had the opportunity to visit few of the best art museums of the world.

She got introduced to Surrealist paintings in 1927 in a gallery in Left Bank in Paris and also met several Surrealists including Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Yves Tanguy.

Though her mother inspired her to pursue a career in art, her father was against it and later reluctantly allowed her to shift to London where she joined ‘Chelsea School of Art’ in 1935.

‘Surrealism’ a book by Herbert acquainted her with the subject further. In 1936 she visited the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ held at London and was fascinated by the work of Max Ernst, a German surrealist painter, graphic artist, poet and sculptor.

One of her notable early Surrealist works ‘Self-Portrait: The Inn of the Dawn Horse’ (1936-37), features figures of hyenas and horses that dominated many of her future works.

She met Max Ernst first in 1937, at 20 years of age, and soon got romantically involved with the 46 year old man. As her father did not accept the relationship, he disowned her. Ernst and Carrington moved to Paris and after separating from his wife Ernst settled in Saint Martin d’Ardèche with Carrington in 1938.

She took part in the 1938 ‘Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme’ held in Paris and also at a Surrealism exhibition in Amsterdam.

Ernst and Carrington supported and respected each other’s work. Her artworks during this time include ‘The Horses of Lord Candlestick’ (1938), ‘The Meal of Lord Candlestick’ (1938), ‘The Inn of the Dawn Horse’ (Self-Portrait) in 1939 and ‘Portrait of Max Ernst (1939).

In 1986 she received a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ from ‘Women’s Caucus for Art’ (WCA) in New York.

She remained the subject of a special retrospective, ‘The Celtic Surrealist’ held at Dublin’s ‘Irish Museum of Modern Art’ in 2013.