Leonora Carrington — The Lost Surrealist

Leonora Carrington lived and worked alongside Max Ernst, Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso in Paris at the height of the surrealist movement. This film explores her dazzling and remarkable life through her strange and haunting work, which recently has begun selling for millions of dollars. Leonora was born into British aristocracy — she was a debutante presented at court to the King but ran from this privilege to become an artist and lover of Max Ernst in the 1930s surrealist explosion in Paris, where she mixed as an equal with Breton and Picasso. After Ernst was interned by the Nazis, she had a breakdown and was incarcerated in a Spanish psychiatric asylum before escaping and settling finally in Mexico, where she was hailed as a visionary artist, writer, and sculptor. Leonora’s work is cinematic. Her work depicts strange and often dark worlds into which the viewer is drawn – they might be the paintings of one’s own dreams. Interspersed with experimental animation, the film celebrates a woman whose artistic contribution has been historically overlooked.