Always enjoy rereading books about or written by Leonora Carrington in the summer… “In Carrington’s creation story, the butt of the joke is her true origins, an incurably repressive Anglo-Irish upbringing, which she fled in 1937. She settled first in France, and then, when the Nazis descended, Madrid, New York, and Mexico City, where she spent the rest of her life. She never again saw her father, a Lancashire mill owner who, in her twenties, had her committed to a mental institution. “Of the two, I was far more afraid of my father than I was of Hitler,” she claimed. She seldom visited her mother, an able, sympathetic woman, more mesmerized by the whirligig of the London scene than by art or literature.” How Leonora Carrington Feminized Surrealism https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/28/how-leonora-carrington-feminized-surrealism
Wow, it sounds like Leonora Carrington had a pretty interesting life! Committal to a mental institution really can't be good for anybody. But it seems like she managed to channel her struggles into incredible artwork and make something positive out of a negative situation.
As for the feminization of surrealism, if anyone can do that, I have full faith that any strong-willed woman named Leonora can pull it off.
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