Pablo Weisz Carrington

About the artist

“The Leonora Carrington​ Consejo is welcoming Zurich-based rossogranada as our representatives in Switzerland​ and Europe. As custodians of ​Carrington’s legacy, we will be working alongside the Swiss organisation to bring to the European audiences a series of exhibitions and projects with the vision to continue the discourse around Leonora’s cultural heritage in more diverse and fresh audiences.”

- Pablo Weisz Carrington

Rossogranada is delighted to announce its representation of the Leonora Carrington Consejo in Switzerland and Europe. The British born artist, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was most recently celebrated at the Milk of Dreams, the 59th Venice Biennale which was entirely dedicated to the influence and creative mind of a leading female figure of the feminist Surrealist movement.

Supporting the Leonora Carrington Consejo at its oeuvre to preserve and promote the legacy of the artist, rossogranada will embark on a series of educational projects, exhibitions, international presentation and an annual magazine that will launch in 2024, where Carrington’s contribution to the contemporary art creativity will be further explored, discussed and visualised. Most specifically, rossogranada will be aiming at showcasing the artist’s sculptures -a body of work never before shown in Europe- which has been an integral and robust part of her practice from the late Thirties to the very end of her life.

Image on the left: Hermann Landshoff, Leonora Carrington in her Greenwich Village apartment, 1942. Münchner Stadtmuseum. Sammlung Fotografie/Archiv Landshoff. Photo Scala, Florence/ bpk, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. Photo © 2022 Münchner Stadtmuseum.

Leonora Carrington OBE (1917-2011) was a surrealist painter, sculptor and a novelist of British descent, who lived the majority of her life in Mexico. Credited with being a pioneer feminist artist of the Surrealist movement, Carrington’s work is centred around the supernatural, the occult, nature and oftentimes autobiographical references. Following her art studies in London, she relocated to France to be with Max Ernst. She got acquainted with the Surrealist circle and in the year 1937 she produced her first painting and the following year her first sculpture, both works depicting horses which was a favourite subject of hers.

In 1938 Carrington participated in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris, a Surrealism exhibition in Amsterdam and a group show in New York featuring 31 Women Artists. Despite her close ties with the Surrealist movement, she refrained from perceiving herself as a Surrealist artist or as a member of the movement, fiercely advocating that women should have the space to carve their own trajectory than being instead muses to male artists. She maintained a strong feminist position throughout her life and career and as such she only recently has started being recognised for her contribution in the fight for women’s rights.

Carrington moved to the Americas in 1941 to avoid the war in Europe and eventually she settled in Mexico City where she lived for the rest of her life. She found inspiration in art, nature and literature, from Hieronymus Bosch to Beatrix Potter and the writings of the ancient Mayan people. Her body of work, largely under-researched, began being studied in Europe in the recent decades with the first retrospective in the UK organised by Pallant House in 2010. In 2022 Carrington's work received the attention of curator Cecilia Alemani who named the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale after the title of a book by the artist.

Her work is represented in several public and private collections around the world, notably the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ,CA; the Tate, London; the National Museum of Women In The Arts, Washington DC; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Harvard Art Museums, MA; Museo Pape, Mexico, Maison André Breton, France and several other.

This is a joint announcement by the Leonora Carrington Consejo and rossogranada.