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The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington
The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington: A Surreal Life | Joanna Moorhead
8 posts | 3 read | 3 to read
In 2006 journalist Joanna Moorhead discovered that her father's cousin, Prim, who had disappeared many decades earlier, was now a famous artist in Mexico. Although rarely spoken of in her own family (regarded as a black sheep, a wild child; someone they were better off without) in the meantime Leonora Carrington had become a national treasure in Mexico, where she now lived, while her paintings are fetching ever-higher prices at auction today. Intrigued by her story, Joanna set off to Mexico City to find her lost relation. Later she was to return to Mexico ten times more between then and Leonora's death in 2011, sometimes staying for months at a time and subsequently travelling around Britain and through Europe in search of the loose ends of her tale. They spent days talking and reading together, drinking tea and tequila, going for walks and to parties and eating take away pizzas or dining out in her local restaurants as Leonora told Joanna the wild and amazing truth about a life that had taken her from the suffocating existence of a debutante in London via war-torn France with her lover, Max Ernst, to incarceration in an asylum and finally to the life of a recluse in Mexico City. Leonora was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s, a founding member of the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s and a woman whose reputation will survive not only as a muse but as a novelist and a great artist. This book is the extraordinary story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the friendship between two women, related by blood but previously unknown to one another, whose encounters were to change both their lives.
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blurb
Suet624
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Today seems to be a Leonora Carrington day for me! I became so intrigued with her while I was reading The Hearing Trumpet. Today I finally received this book and can‘t wait to get to it. #NYRBbookclub

Bookwomble I loved this book 🙂 4y
vivastory I *think* I read a bio on her many years ago but this one sounds great 4y
charl08 She led such a remarkable life! 4y
See All 6 Comments
Suet624 @bookkwomble @charl08 I think it was both of your recommendations that excited me about the book! Thank you both! 4y
batsy This looks good and I look forward to your review! 4y
charl08 Aw, thank you. You made my day! 🐧 4y
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review
Bookwomble
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Pickpick

My first book finished in 2021, and it was a great way to kick off the year: 5? Probably because I think I've fallen in love with Leonora Carrington!
I already loved her art, and her novella "The Hearing Trumpet" is magical, but learning more about her life has deepened my appreciation.
From rejecting her family's capitalistic values, to rejecting the misogynistic values of the surrealist art set, which included Ernst, Picasso and Dali, ??

Bookwomble ...she forged her own path, rising above trauma and hardship, never compromising her artistic vision.
The author is Carrington's cousin, who only knew her in the last 5 years of her long life, and the deep love and respect she feels for her subject are touchingly evident. This might possibly affect the objectivity of this biography, but that's fine by me.
Bonus: it has beautiful reproductions of some of Carrington's art works.
4y
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Bookwomble
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For no better reason (though a good one, I think) than that we were both born in Lancashire, I feel Leonora Carrington is "one of us". Obviously, she took the first opportunity to get pretty much as far away from here as she could, but still...

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charl08
Pickpick

More like many lives: fascinating biography of woman who escaped the Nazis and her father to live in exile in Mexico.

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charl08
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With all the vintage crazes, struck by how this image of Leonora and her friends in 1937 seems so "modern".

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charl08
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I love this. What gives some people the power to reject these rules (1930s)

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charl08
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Just one piece of Carrington's art. This is her bio.

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Vikz
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My #EasterWeekend read. Excellent so far. Happy Easter if you celebrate. If not have a restful weekend