Covid permitting, by the end of this year art enthusiasts will be able to visit the house/studio in Mexico City’s Roma district where renowned British surrealist artist Leonora Carrington lived and worked for 65 years until her death in 2011.
The project has been undertaken by the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico (UAM), which purchased the property from Carrington’s youngest son Pablo in 2017.
The sale included all the contents of the house, many of which will be on display when the museum opens. According to Joanna Moorhead, Carrington’s niece and the author of “The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington,” the collection includes around 8,000 items. Apart from a few minor alterations, the house will remain “95 percent the way that Carrington left it,” project director Alejandra Osorio said in a recent article penned by Moorhead.
Carrington was born in 1917 to a family headed by a wealthy textile manufacturer in Clayton Green, Lancashire, England. She attended Mrs. Penrose’s Academy of Art in Florence after being sent there for being incorrigibly rebellious. She was only ten when she first saw a surrealist painting, in a gallery in Paris’ famous Left Bank. She would become acquainted later with many famous painters working in the genre, including Paul Eduard, a key founder of the movement. Upon her return to London she furthered her studies at Chelsea School of Art and the Ozenfant Academy.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.