7 February 2025
I could stare at Leonora Carrington’s art for hours and still discover new worlds and characters. And in times as strange as 2025, perhaps falling down the rabbit hole into one of her fantastical works is exactly what we need.
The British-born, nationalized-Mexican artist was one of the best storytellers during the surrealist movement of the 1930s-40s. In addition to her memoirs and works of fiction, her practice of using autobiographical details blended with magical realism often allowed her artworks to unfold like a visual narrative. In keeping with surrealism, they’re not quite linear narratives, but certain figures and motifs emerge throughout her paintings, sculptures and works on paper. There are recurring themes like alchemy, eggs, transformation, horses and other animals from work to work that observers will spot in most exhibitions. (Give it a try!)
Perhaps most significantly, counter to the male surrealists of the time, she approached female sexuality and identity as a force of creation rather than through an objectifying lens.
“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse,” Carrington famously wrote in “House of Fear,” her 1988 autobiographical novella collection. “I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”
The focus on storytelling and literary influence in “Leonora Carrington: Mythopoesis,” the fifth exhibition of the artist by Gallery Wendi Norris, isn’t just right for the subject, it’s so right for the moment. Think of the recurring elements in the 15 works on view at the San Francisco gallery as an extended universe spanning 50 years.
“Myths and fairy tales were a through line throughout her work,” says Melanie Cameron, the senior director of Gallery Wendi Norris. “It’s not only the existing myths and fairy tales that inspired her from her Celtic heritage, or from living in Mexico with Mesoamerican myths or from Egyptian mythology, but it’s also how she then took those elements and created her own myths.”
Carrington (1917-2011) has been the subject of a major revival of interest in the art world and wider culture the past two decades, aided by reissues of her writing, new exhibitions, scholarship and a reassessment of the overlooked contributions of women in surrealism.
Her children’s book, “The Milk of Dreams,” inspired the theme of curator Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 Venice Biennale, and fashion designers from Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior to Gabriela Hearst cite her aesthetic as influences in their work.
In May 2024, Carrington’s 1945 painting “Les Distractions de Dagobert” set a record for the artist, bringing $28.5 million in an auction at Sotheby’s.
Wendi Norris has been a key part of the Carrington renaissance through her presentations of the work and support of new publications, giving San Francisco a front-row seat. “Mythopoesis” opens with a stunning combination of the 1945 cradle sculpture “La Cuna” and the 1958 painting “Equinoxio.” The first, a child-size sailboat mounted on a wooden wave carved by José Horna for his daughter (and Carrington’s goddaughter) Norah Horna, evokes the enchanting wonder of childhood with its strange whimsy. With its parade of painted animals (turtles, felines, birds) around the cradle, it brings to mind Noah’s Ark, or a vessel to escort Little Nemo to Slumberland. “Equinoxio,” which makes its public debut, shows a horse figure (often a symbol for herself or for female liberation) with a celestial theme and eclipsing suns and moons.
“I love that there are lots of conversations in this show,” Norris said, noting the sun and moon motifs that recur between the two works, as well as the double meaning in the title of both the seasonal equinox and equine as in horse.
Then there’s the untitled 1948-1955 wool tapestry, co-created with the Rosales family of weavers, that shows a boat with the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl as the dragon head at the bow while two birdlike creatures ride inside. It’s a beautiful testament to the influence of Mexican culture and craft on Carrington’s work.
But perhaps the most significant autobiographical piece in this exhibition is the 1941 work on paper “More Frontiers of Space,” created after Carrington was institutionalized and underwent electroshock therapy for four months in Madrid. Carrington is depicted as a harpy figure, talons seemingly digging into the flesh of her other avatar, the horse.
“It’s never derivative, it’s always very uniquely her,” Cameron said of how Carrington interwove the various sources that made her visual stories. “It’s like an image at the perimeter of your vision where you almost can pinpoint it. You think you see what the reference is, what she’s trying to do, and then it shifts into something else.”
