Leonora Carrington (April 6th 1917 with Clayton Green, Lancashire -) is a painter and British novelist resulting from a family of industrial rich person. Turbulent child, it wants very early to devote himself to painting and enters to London the Academy of Amédée Ozenfant. It makes also its entry with Buckingham Palace like " débutante" in the large world.

It meets max Ernst during an exposure to London. It is the love at first sight and it follows it to France. The couple settles with Saint-Martin-in Ardèche in a house which they decorate with their sculptures. Leonor Finished and Paul Éluard come to visit them, Lee Miller photography. It was max Ernst which presented it to the Surréaliste S. André Breton admires her texts and includes the tale the Beginner in her Anthologie of black humor . Writing in English, French and Spanish, it published Conte S and surrealist plays in which the black Humor côtoie the Onirisme. It paints a Autoportrait, " With the inn of the Horse of aube".

When Germany and France enter in war, Ernst is imprisoned initially as a German national, then after the Occupation, as an opponent with the mode Nazi. Failing to make it release, thorough by friends, Leonora Carrington accompanies them in Spain. It leaves behind it several texts, of which " History of Small Francis" , which will be found only well later by a specialist in max Ernst, the historian of art Werner Spies. In this foreign country, in this intolerable situation, it sinks in is delirious. She reports in her Récit In Bottom her psychiatric internment in Spain. She manages to escape from the psychiatric hospital of Santander, and finds a friend, the poet and diplomatic Mexican Renato Leduc. He marries it to enable him to leave Spain.

She lived the major part of her life (since 1939) with Mexico City. She found there several Surréalistes like Remedios Varo, which becomes his/her best friend, Benjamin Péret, Alice Rahon, the sculptor Jose Horna with whom she collaborate and Kati Horna, Günther Gerszo… And the photographer Imre " Chiqui" Weisz, which she marries. It enters during one time of intense creation. It takes part in a contest to paint a " Holy Antoine " who will appear in film of Albert Lewin, The Private Affairs off Beautiful Friend (1947). One counts in particular among the participants max Ernst - who gains the contest - and Salvador Dali. Two children are born, Pablo and Gabriel. Leonora Carrington writes the Ear trumpet and the stone Door.

To the Mexico, it binds to the Mexican Intelligentsia: its friendship with Octavio Paz or its visits at Frida Kahlo testify some. Carlos Fuentes speaks about " sorcery ironique" about it. Alejandro Jodorowsky puts in scene its play Pénélope . The poet and Mécène English Edward James takes it under his wing, and asks him to carry out fresco for its house Surréaliste " Mow Pozas" , in Jilitlá (state of San Luis Potosí). It also carries out a fresco on " the magic World of the Mayas " for the National museum of anthropology of Mexico.

A part which she wrote in the years 1940, the Festival of the lamb , was adapted in the form of opera by Austrian the Elfriede Jelinek and Olga Neuwirth: Bählamms Fest is created in Vienna in 1999. These last years, Leonora Carrington is devoted especially to the Sculpture. One of it is placed in the park of Chapultepec, with Mexico City].

Bibliography (works published in French)

• In Bottom , coll “Disorder”, ED. The Waste ground, 1973
• the Ear trumpet , coll “the Golden age”, ED. Flammarion, 1974 (taken again with the ED. GF/Garnier-Flammarion, n°397, 1983)
• the stone Door, coll “the Golden age”, ED. Flammarion, 1976
• the Beginner, tales and parts , coll “the Golden age”, ED. Flammarion, 1978
• Pigeon flies, found tales , coll “Full Margin”, ED. Time That It Makes, 1986

With reading

• Susan Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art , Adershot & Burlington, Lund Humphries, 2004.
• Marie Blancard, “female figures in the tales of Leonora Carrington”, in Christiane Chaulet Achour (to dir.), Tale and narration with female the , the Manuscript “Letters”, 2005.
• Whitney Chadwick, Leonora Carrington, Realidad of the imaginación , Mexico City, Consejo Nacional para Cultura there tired Artes/Era, 1994.
• Julotte Rock, max and Leonora, account of investigation , Cognac, Time that it makes, 1997.

External bond

• a site devoted to Leonora Carrington