Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary
Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, Sussex
12 July – 26 October 2024
A decade ago, Leonora Carrington was not a known name in the UK. That is until her cousin, the journalist Joanna Moorhead, brought her under the spotlight with her up-close-and-personal biography, published in 2017, detailing Carrington’s amazing story of elopement, being at the epicentre of the surrealist group in Paris, hiding from the Nazis in southern France, incarceration in a Spanish asylum, and daring escape to – and new life in – Mexico. All at once, Carrington, who had died in 2011, aged 94, an eccentric English artist in her adopted home of Mexico City, began to be talked about in the same vein as her fellow Mexican female art celebrity – and erstwhile friend – Frida Kahlo, and, like Kahlo, it was primarily her personal life for which she became known. Her paintings were also showcased, however, with exhibitions in, among other cities, Madrid (2023), Copenhagen (2022) and Dublin (2013), and at Tate Liverpool, to coincide with the 2015 Year of Mexico in the UK celebrations. Last year, Moorhead published a second biography, focused more on place, and much more lavishly illustrated than the first. Then, this May one of Carrington’s paintings – Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) – sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $28.5m, making her the highest-selling female artist in British history.
Read my full review here