Gallery Wendi Norris presents Leonora Carrington: The Celtic Surrealist, a traveling subset of works from the critically acclaimed 2013 exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin. In the gallery’s second solo show for Carrington (English, 1917-2011), and the first since Carrington’s death in 2011, The Celtic Surrealist comprises paintings, gouaches, and rarely exhibited tapestries from 1948-1974.Carrington’s otherworldly narrative paintings comprised of hybrid creatures, twisted mythological narratives, and politically charged and humorous fairytales are further understood by revisiting her Irish ancestry as well as referencing the epic tales told to her by her Irish grandmother and mother. Carrington’s upper-class English upbringing mixed with her inherent unorthodox and mischievous nature fueled the visual vocabulary of much of her work. Her singular vision may be even better explained through the multicultural references inherent in the work. Themes such as metamorphosis and transformation prevail throughout the artworks in the exhibition. For example, a seven-piece gouache series, exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s seminal exhibition, Two Private Eyes (1999), depicts humans transforming into fish, scorpions, and assorted mythological gods and creatures. Sanctuary for Furies, a substantial painting from a later period, portrays a periodic table of sorts that revisits many of the iconic figures from her lexicon.
About the artist:
Leonora Carrington (Lancashire 1917 – Ciudad de México 2011) moved to London and Paris in 1936 at age 19. She became a central figure in the Surrealist movement exhibiting at the International Exhibition of Surrealism (1938) in Paris, alongside André Breton, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Wolfgang Paalen, Salvador Dali, and others. In 1940, following the internment of her lover Max Ernst, she suffered a mental breakdown after which she escaped from Lisbon to Mexico where she lived until her death in 2011 at the age of 94.
Carrington’s artworks and writing span 70 years. British poet and collector of Surrealism, Edward James, was an early patron of her work and organized her first solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York in 1948. Carrington’s works have exhibited at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Pallant House in Chichester, UK, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Prado Museum, Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, among others. In 1963, she completed the celebrated mural, The Magical World of the Mayas in Mexico’s National Anthropological Museum. Carrington’s large-scale bronze sculptures are featured prominently throughout Mexico City today. Carrington published several books, most notably The Hearing Trumpet and a memoir, Down Below.
-Gallery Wendi Norris
Image: © Leonora Carrington
Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris
