Description
Leonora Carrington (1917–2011)
Leonora Carrington was a visionary British-born, Mexican-based artist, writer, and one of the most original voices of Surrealism. Defying convention from an early age, she rejected the rigid structures of her aristocratic upbringing in England in favour of a life devoted to imagination, myth, and creative freedom.
After becoming associated with the Surrealist circle in Europe in the late 1930s, Carrington’s life and work were profoundly shaped by displacement, transformation, and reinvention. Following a period of personal upheaval during the Second World War, she eventually settled in Mexico City in the 1940s—a place that became her true home and an enduring source of inspiration.
Carrington’s work exists in a world of its own: richly symbolic, fiercely intellectual, and deeply magical. Her paintings, sculptures, and writings draw from alchemy, Celtic folklore, medieval mysticism, Jungian psychology, and Mexican cosmology. Populated by hybrid creatures, sorceresses, animals, and androgynous beings, her imagery challenges patriarchal narratives and reclaims myth through a distinctly feminine, subversive lens.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Carrington refused to be defined as a muse or secondary figure. She forged an independent artistic language—playful yet rigorous, enigmatic yet precise—that continues to resonate strongly with contemporary audiences.
Today, Leonora Carrington is recognized not only as a key figure of Surrealism, but as a timeless symbol of artistic autonomy, intellectual rebellion, and imaginative courage.
