Leonora Carrington

A really wonderful book on Leonora Carrington has just helped me fill in all sorts of blanks in my knowledge about this high-voltage Surrealist painter, who died earlier this year at the age of 94. The book, in Spanish, is simply entitled "Leonora", in the form of a novel, but clearly hewing very close to reality, because the authoress, Elena Poniatowska, knew Leonora well in Mexico City.

A rebel from the very start, Leonora Carrington spent her privileged youth in Britain in a series of acts of defiance against her father, Harold Carrington, the then powerful and very wealthy head of Imperial Chemical Industries. She soon developed a very lively imagination and fascination with Celtic folklore, as well as a deep love of horses, a motif that appeared frequently in her paintings.

Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst

Her love of art helped sweep her into a world where she met Max Ernst, the Dada and Surrealist German painter. Ernst influenced her way of painting, hardly surprising for they had a passionate love affair in Paris and the South of France until Ernst was arrested and interned after the Germans invaded France. Their circle of friends included most of the artists and celebrities of pre-World War II who spent time in Paris, from Picasso to Andre Breton, Dali, Paul Eluard and Miró .

After Ernst was arrested, Leonora suffered a horrific nervous breakdown. She escaped to New York after so-called treatment for the breakdown at an expensive clinic in Spain, an escape from war-ravaged Europe that was only possible because she married Renato Leduc, working at that time in the Mexican Embassy. Peggy Guggenheim was also awaiting passage to New York and the whole group of Surrealist authors, artists and their entourage continued to see each other in New York, where Peggy Guggenheim helped secure exhibits for the Surrealists.

Leonora painted but she also wrote a large number of books that garnered her a loyal following, especially after she moved with Leduc to Mexico City. There, she and Leduc separated and she married the Hungarian refugee Surrealist photographer, "Chiki" Weisz who had been the darkroom manager for his friend, the photographer Robert Capa.

Chiki Ton Pays., Leonora Carrington

Leonora's life in Mexico City was enriched by friendships with other artists, such as Remedios Varo, as they explored Mexican folklore, pre-Columbian art, alchemy, Jungian and Freudian thinking, Gudjieff's writings – in wonderfully diverse intellectual questings. All these strands showed up in some form or another in Carrington's paintings, and she became one of the most celebrated artists in Mexico. The mythical worlds she created on canvas (and in sculptures) wove magical beings and animals together, literally (for she would turn cobras into goats or transform blind crows into trees) and metaphorically.

Lepidoptera,.1968, Leonora Carrington

Untitled,1969,  gouache on  vellum, Leonora Carrington (Image courtesy of Guggenheim Museum)

Leonora Carrington's life is an inspiration to us all as artists. She dared defy traditions and pre-conceptions. She drew on such diverse sources for inspiration, from childhood, from fairy stories and folk art, from religions. She was endlessly creative and inventive, in her writing, in her art and in her relationships with friends and acquaintances.

When Elena Poniatowska's book, "Leonora", is translated into English, as it surely will be, I highly recommend it. It is a fascinating way to learn more about this remarkable Surrealist artist.

A Sense of the Marvellous

I saw a large and diverse exhibition of black and white photographs of Paris, Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris, at Savannah's Telfair Museum. In the introductory explanation about all these photos which mostly date from the 1920s and 1930s, there was the phrase, "a sense of the marvellous". It struck me, because it is so important to retain that sense, especially if one wants to be an artist.

The exhibition did indeed illustrate some wonderful moments. Serendipitous sights - the wonderful reflection of buildings in a puddle by the pavement's edges by Ilse Bing, for instance, or extraordinary patterns of shadows and people beneath the Eiffel Tower by Andre Kertesz - were accompanied by more planned photographs of the illuminated Eiffel Tower. or old street scenes in Paris. There were many photographs which were much more "contrived", in keeping with the prevailing surrealism movement. But it was the photographs that record the photographer's eye and awareness of magic and marvels that I savoured most.

Ilse Bing, 'Three men on steps by the Seine' , (Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum)

Ilse Bing, Rue de Valois, Paris, 1932, gelatin-silver print, (Image courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Perhaps I am greatly influenced by all the childhood hours I spent with my photographer grandfather, Frank Anderson, as he photographed herds of giraffe or other wild animals on our farm in Tanzania. With an important body of work to his credit, as he documented the disappearing tribes and the East African wild life, Frank had a keenly developed sense of the marvellous. He taught me that observation and awareness, as well as quick reactions in capturing a photograph, are key. Key to art-making, but key, too, to a deep enjoyment and appreciation of life. It was an invaluable preparation for my later life as an artist.

Children in central Tanganyika, 1929-30, sepia print, Frank Anderson photographer (copyright Jeannine Cook)