Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington OBE was an English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. Born into an upper-class family with Irish mother and English father, she defied his opposition to study at Chelsea School of Art in 1935. With architect Serge Chermayeff’s help, she transferred to Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in London, established by French modernist Amédée Ozenfant.

After traveling to Spain and South Africa in the 1930s and undergoing psychiatric treatment, she married a Mexican ambassador in Portugal, whom she met through Pablo Picasso. Her marriage enabled her live to Mexico in 1942 during World War two. She spent most of her life in Mexico City and was among the last surviving participants of the 1930s Surrealist movement. Her unique style blended regional folklore with surrealist aesthetics. 

In the 1970s, Carrington co-founded Mexico’s Women’s Liberation Movement. While Surrealists often viewed women as muses rather than artists, she was embraced as a femme-enfant by the Surrealists because of her rebelliousness against her upper-class upbringing.