Noticias
As part of her centenary
MAM presents multifaceted Leonora Carrington
April 17, 2018With the exhibition of 230 pieces, some of them unpublished, including easel painting, sculpture, rugs, masks, photographs, documents and books, the exhibition Leonora Carrington. Magical stories show a visionary artist completely ahead of her time, with a total congruence between life and work, said Tere Arcq, co-curator of the exhibition.
25 years after the last retrospective of the surrealist artist mounted in Mexico, the Museum of Modern Art (MAM, for its acronym in Spanish) houses the exhibition in two halls and a photographic cabinet that addresses her facets as a painter, sculptor, scenographer, designer, playwright, in addition to her collaborations in the seventh art.
The exhibition is divided into eight sections: The young artist. Paris and New York 1937-1942; The Exile in Mexico: Friends and Family; The White Goddess: Women, Sorcerers and Goddesses; The Animal Kingdom; World Religions and Ancient Myths; Narrative Imagination: Literature, Theater and Cinema; Politics and Feminism; and Mexico, Mirror of the Wonderful.
Tere Arcq explained that the exhibition is not a traditional retrospective in chronological order, going from the first to the last Carrington’s works, but explores the artist's concerns separately.
"There are very important historical moments in Leonora's life that merited a chronological space such as her beginnings in Surrealism in France, her arrival in Mexico, or her political activity in 1968 and the early seventies, but at the same time she had constant themes that she decided to explore in a specific way”.
The art historian pointed out that Carrington's different interests are displayed in a dialogue, as her literature and painting are inseparable. She indicated that during the tour the spectator will find display cabinets that exhibit documents such as photographs, original manuscripts, books, catalogues and letters she wrote to Renato Leduc.
"She is also present in theater, her brief participations and creative part are present in cinema, which almost nobody knows about. She participated as a double in the movie En este pueblo no hay ladrones (In this town there are no thieves), and as an actress in Un alma pura (A Pure Soul). She supervised all of his son Gabriel Weisz's creative design for La mansion de la locura (The Mansion of Madness).
Arcq said that the exhibition also aims to show that Leonora Carrington was linked to nature and ecology, and that she was a natural feminist, which she explored with concepts and the study of the goddesses of matriarchal cultures.
"Carrington was avant-garde in many things and we want to bring her work closer to the new generations, so the proposal of the exhibition is to make it known in all its dimensions, especially in recent years. Some people only know her sculpture of crocodiles”.
"She was a total artist because she participated in all disciplines, collaborated with other artists, which was very much the spirit of the surrealists. There is the manuscript of one of her novels The stone door, which originally had a cover illustrated by Remedios Varo and we have the painting of that cover book", shared the curator with mastery in museums and art management.
Leonora Carrington. Magical stories brings together works from 64 different collections: 54 private and 10 institutional, of which 166 were produced in Mexico, 42 in the United States and 19 in Great Britain.
Arcq reported that many of the pieces are unpublished, shown for the first time in Mexico, including a screen painted with mythical figures, a tarot, posters for feminist groups in New York, and sketches for a mural made in the Hospital Siglo XXI.
Stefan van Raay, co-curator of the exhibition, mentioned that another discipline in which Carrington ventured was in textiles. "In Mexico, almost nobody knows this facet, she worked with a family of weavers from Chiconcuac, where they made different rugs. The mural The Magic World of the Maya with all her preparatory studies had not been seen either”.
In the theatrical field, Leonora Carrington wrote the unpublished farce play Opus Siniestros in 1969, that will be staged by the National Theater Company and performing it on Saturdays from May 5 to August 25 in the gardens of the MAM. The script, masks and costume design were recovered for its production.
The Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts will publish a bilingual catalogue, which will feature 14 authors and 24 voices of friends and people who knew or had a relationship with the artist, said Miguel Fernández Félix, director of the site located in the Historic Center.
Kevin Mackenzie, director of the British Council Mexico, recalled that Carrington arrived in Mexico in 1942, fleeing persecution and violence during the Second World War.
"In Mexico she found such a colorful and cosmopolitan host country open to diversity and dialogue with other cultures of the world. Here she discovered her vocation for painting, but also as a sculptor, scenographer and writer, until she became the main world references in surrealist art," she said.
The exhibition Leonora Carrington. Magical stories will open on Friday, April 20 at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Modern Art, located in Paseo de la Reforma and Gandhi s/n.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
