Leonora Carrington’s work is on display at Petworth, UK’s Newlands House Gallery until October 26, 2024 and it’s a must-see. Curated by Joanna Moorhead, writer, journalist, and cousin of Carrington who has written two biographies on the artist, the show features pieces spanning her entire career. Colourful walls welcome visitors in a show that traces Carrington’s life and immense talent.

Carrington was one of the last surviving members of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s and spent the majority of her life in Mexico City. In the 1970s, she also became a pioneer of the women’s freedom movement in Mexico and often positioned alongside Frida Kahlo. As Carrington said about her happy and tragic life surrounded by other world famous artists: “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”

Rebel Visionary brilliantly explores five decades of her extensive career. Most of the pieces are on loan from the Leonora Carrington Council from Mexico and the UK, and are seen for the first time on British soil. A series of masks created for a theatrical production of The Tempest in the 1950s is a highlight, alongside, original lithographs, tapestries, sketches, sculptures, jewellery, photos from the archives of her husband and photographer Emérico “Chiki” Weisz and Lee Miller, as well as paintings. The interview video at the end is a fascinating and poignant document showing the artist’s wit and intelligence on subjects such as making art, politics and her native England. The amazing masks featured in the last room of this impressive museum/house is certainly the crescendo of this remarkable show.

“As the feminist art collective The Guerrilla Girls wryly commented, being a woman artist comes with certain advantages: these include being able to work without the pressures of success, and discovering your career picks up in your eighties. Today, more than a decade after her death in May 2011, Carrington’s time has come.  Newlands House Gallery focuses on the breadth, the variety and the extraordinary imagination of work across her eight-decade career.” – Joanna Moorhead, Exhibition Curator, writes.

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