Explore the Divine Femininity of 'La Grande Dame' by Leonora Carrington
Imposing in scale and lyrical in form, La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) is a towering embodiment of Leonora Carrington’s pioneering and fantastical creative vision. One of very few painted sculptures the artist ever executed, it represents the pinnacle of her sculptural production and offers a rare opportunity to enter physically into her world. Its daunting height belies the warmth of its presence; La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) is vividly adorned with a host of hybrid creatures and lush dreamscapes and evokes a lasting sense of awe. This otherworldly being serves not only as a three-dimensional crystallization of the focus on divine femininity that is fundamental to her ethos, but also as a testament to the rich artistic friendships she developed in her adopted homeland of Mexico.
One of many Surrealists to make an exodus to Mexico following the Second World War, Carrington was deeply taken upon her arrival there in 1943 with the diverse magical and syncretic Catholic traditions of the local people. The harmony of indigenous Aztec, Mayan and more modern Western traditions resonated with the artist, whose fascination with the occult began with the Irish myths her grandmother taught her as a young girl. Most critical from this early period are the deep creative friendships that Carrington found in Mexico among her fellow emigres—in particular with the Spanish painter Remedios Varo and Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
These three artists, first drawn together by their affinity for the occult and love of their new homeland, were bonded more deeply by the tragedies endured during the war years and the marginalization they experienced from the Parisian Surrealist group (see fig. 1). Together, the three of them built spaces both in their respective pictorial universes and in their lives where the “feminine” realms of the home and kitchen become spaces of alchemical creativity, practical jokes and joy. Echoes of these friendships appear throughout Carrington’s work, often in representations of witches or the ancient Irish "Triple Goddess"; they are profoundly evidenced in both the form and surface decoration of La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman).
La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) was executed with the support of Jose Horna, Kati Horna’s husband—a gifted woodworker and inventive artist in his own right (see fig. 2). Though never trained as a sculptor, with Horna’s support Carrington could, for the first time, bring the mystical characters who populate her paintings into human dimension. Their collaboration was brief, and limited to only to a few objects—of which La Grande Dame is the most impressive. Only a small number of these works are still known to survive today; La Grande Dame is by far her most complete and complex engagement with sculpture.
Crafted in larger-than-life scale and richly adorned with bright, narrative vignettes, La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) creates a profound sense of otherworldly presence. From her butterfly-like face and placid expression, to her balletic arms and long, elegant fingers, to the geometric styling of her feet, she echoes traditions both ancient and modern. The work can be situated within a kaleidoscope of different cultural references, particularly in the narrative iconography that populates its finely-painted surface. It also speaks to the work of other Modern sculptors of the European avant-garde in its use of stillness, line and negative space to evoke mood. The incredibly fine detail of the wondrous creatures who populate its surface and the sensuous palette, dominated by soft lavender, marigold, crimson and teal, is characteristic of Carrington’s exacting technique.
Carrington was an inquisitive child living in rural Northwestern England when Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt in 1922. She was captivated by the ancient world that unfolded in the news; her fascination with ancient Egypt followed her long into adulthood. In La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman), she references representations of the goddess Bastet (see fig. 3), a powerful protective deity associated with fertility who was often depicted with the head of a cat. Cats recur in many of Carrington, Varo and Horna's works as symbols of feminine power and mystery (all three were also dedicated cat owners); part of the work's mysterious dual-language title no doubt originates here. She borrows many of the aesthetic conventions of Egyptian sculpture, from the figure’s rigid frontality and stylized geometric simplicity, to the symbolic narratives of life, death and rebirth that cover it. Yet she introduces a vitality and organic looseness brings the work firmly into the twentieth century, a modern vision of an ancient goddess.
La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) was executed the same year that the United Kingdom lifted its Witchcraft Act, which had prohibited study of magic and the occult since 1541. This moment brought on an influx of research on the subject, which Carrington hungrily consumed (see fig. 4). André Breton “extolled Jules Michelet’s 1862 study of witchcraft, La Sorcière, and was inspired to create the term femme sorcière to label a special category of contemporary enchantress, citing Carrington as a prime example. Carrington herself closely identified with the figure of the witch, reconfiguring the trope from its misogynist associations into an icon of feminist empowerment, symbolically linked to female creative energies and self-determination…” (Susan Aberth, "Modern Enchantress: Leonora Carrington, Surrealism, and Magic" in Exh. Cat., Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and Potsdam, Museum Barberini, Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, 2022, p. 75) The image below the figure’s hips of two bound figures wrapped in turquoise and bright green cloth is one that has appeared elsewhere in her work, and can be related to a confinement torture that was historically used on women accused of witchcraft. Here the bound figures are peaceful, embraced by a grove of lush forest. From each of their chests a tiny flower and a tiny animal emerge; they bring forth new life. Carrington reclaims the agency of these figures, imbuing them with poetic dignity in a gesture that echoes her greater project to center the divine feminine.
In the Surrealist tradition, artists tap into the unconscious, subverting order and rationality to look at what lies underneath. Many of the early Surrealists, artists like Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, apply this principle introspectively, examining their most hidden desires. During his time with the Parisian Surrealist group, Alberto Giacometti executed L'Objet invisible (Mains tenant le vide), a hauntingly poetic image of despairing want (see fig. 5). Its mask-like face, verticality and slender form call to mind La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman)—but where Giacometti’s form is small, imprisoned, still, Carrington’s is grand, powerful, and alive.
In La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman), Carrington turns that Surrealist project of subversion outward—to examine the stories that humanity tells about itself. She synthesizes diverse iconographies of the divine feminine, seeing this as a crucial remedy to the societal ills of the twentieth century she traced to patriarchal culture and the oppression of women. By shedding light on ancient traditions that revered goddesses and female spirits, she offers a new, egalitarian cultural canon, where magic and the occult power can be harnessed for creativity and rebirth—and emphatically asserts it into physical space.
La Grande Dame (Cat Woman) is an emblem of Carrington’s visionary work, and was held for decades in the collection of Edward James. It has been widely exhibited—most recently as a centerpiece of Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and Museum Barberini, Potsdam, which ran alongside the 2022 Venice Biennale. Echoes of Carrington’s feminist ethos can be seen in the work of many of today’s leading sculptors, from Wangechi Mutu’s hybrid characters to Kiki Smith’s re-examinations of foundational myths, and the roles women play in them.
