Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington was a British-Mexican painter known for her evocative and highly personal surrealist paintings. Born in the North of England to a wealthy family, she started painting as a teenager whilst at boarding school in Florence. She was first exposed to Surrealism whilst studying at the Amédée Ozenfant Academy in London. A brief affair in Paris with the much older painter Max Ernst followed, resulting in a mental breakdown and hospitalization. By 1942, she had taken up residence in Mexico City, where she remained for the rest of her life. The treatment of female sexuality in her work was markedly different from others in the predominantly male Surrealist movement. Her otherworldly, dreamlike pictures involved autobiographical elements, twinned with strange glimpses of alchemy and the occult. She also played a crucial role during the 1970s in establishing the Mexican women’s liberation movement. She died aged 94 as the last surviving member of the 1930s Surrealist movement.