Leonora Carrington
This is part two of the story of my recent foray into Surrealist fiction. Read Part One here.
Suddenly I remembered – Leonora Carrington was Remedios Varo’s best friend! (Okay, I confess. I googled her.)
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I became a member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I never made it to DC to visit the museum, but the member materials acquainted me with Varo, a Spanish surrealist who lived in Mexico. Her life was every bit as shockingly bohemian as that of her contemporary Frida Kahlo, but her art more closely resembled Hieronymus Bosch. According to my special-ordered copy of Janet Kaplan’s biography of Varo, she and Carrington
established an association between women’s traditional roles and magical acts of transformation…stimulated by the Surrealist belief in ‘occultation of the Marvelous’ and by wide reading in witchcraft, alchemy, sorcery, Tarot, and magic.
They collaborated on plays, constructed elaborate hats, and victimized their famous art world friends with performance art/pranks that sometimes made their way into each other’s painting and writing.
