No genius evolves in a vacuum. Teasing out the intricate tapestry of influence and experience that wove Leonora Carrington’s extraordinary body of work makes fascinating viewing at the Rose Art Museum on the campus of Brandeis University this spring.
During her lifetime, Carrington produced writing, painting, drawing, tapestry and sculpture. Her imagery is acutely personal and therefore unclassifiable, although she is usually labeled a surrealist and was allied with the movement. Her personal mythologies include recurring protagonists — bird-headed humanoids, elephant-like women — and landscapes and interiors which seem, in and of themselves, sentient.
Influences often cited in Carrington’s work are Celtic mythology (Carrington’s mother and nanny were Irish), and the hybrid animal-humans prevalent in art of the ancient Americas (the artist lived most of her life in Mexico). However, the creatures and landscapes Carrington invents and deploys are her own and existed from the beginning of her career in the 1930s and before, during her childhood.
The circumstances of Carrington’s life are complicated, and rife with drama involving the most significant events of the 20th century. Carrington lived and worked in Great Britain, Europe and Mexico, in a time when travel was largely slow, distances long and world cultures distinct. She spent childhood in a stately stone “pile,” Crookhey Hall, in northwest England, which appears drafty even in photographs. Carrington was expelled from two Roman Catholic convent schools before being sent to boarding school in Italy and then, at her insistence, to London to study painting.