The home of famed Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington in Mexico City is set to become a museum. The museum will showcase 45 sculptures by the artist and some of her personal belongings. The opening date of the museum is yet to be declared.
The painter’s son, Pablo Weisz Carrington, sold the house to the university for $500,000, on the condition that it would be converted into a museum, after 10 years of the artist’s death. Weisz Carrington also mandated that his mother’s studio and kitchen—the site of many occult forays experienced with fellow Surrealist Remedios Varo—be untouched in order to “remain as close as possible to the artist’s daily life”.
Leonora Carrington was born in Lancashire, England, in 1917 into a wealthy family that owned a mill. She moved to Paris in 1938. There, in the company of the Surrealists, she developed a singular visual vocabulary that comprised fantastic human-animal hybrids cavorting in mysterious dreamscapes. Her immense body of work includes paintings and sculptures, as well as novels, plays, and costumes.
Her intense affair with artist Max Ernst ended in 1939 amid the outbreak of World War II. She then fled to Mexico after marrying the Mexican poet Renato Leduc, out of convenience. In Mexico City, her painting practice flourished among a tight-knit circle of artistic émigrés, including painter Remedios Varo and the photographer Kati Horna. Carrington lived in Mexico City until her death at the age of 94.