- 12
Leonora Carrington (B. 1917)
Description
- Leonora Carrington
- El Grito
- signed and dated July 8, 1951 lower right
- 15 3/4 by 35 3/8 in.
- (40 by 89.8 cm)
Provenance
Sale: Christie's, Chichester, West Sussex, The Edward James Collection, West Dean Park, Pictures, Prints and Drawings, June 5, 1986, lot 1788, illustrated
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Latin American Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints, May 18, 1993, lot 55, illustrated in color
Literature
Whitney Chadwick, Leonora Carrington: La Realidad de la Imaginación, Mexico City, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Ediciones Era, 1994, no. 31, illustrated in color
Catalogue Note
The British surrealist and art patron Edward James was an ardent Carrington fan and it is not surprising that this exquisite painting comes from his collection. His discerning eye was quick to find her best work and he remained a generous and faithful supporter of the artist since the two met in 1947.
El Grito (1951) is indicative of a small number of semi-abstract paintings that Carrington executed between 1950 and 1952 and keenly demonstrates how her abstract work contains the same power and mythic spirit of her more figurative representations. The nebulous space portrayed in El Grito pulsates with a wide range of color and odd assortments of characters that seem to reference primitive markings from a variety of sources. The horizontal format of the canvas and the verticality of the markings resemble an abstract Egyptian Book of the Dead.
There is much of surrealist automatism going on here in the sense that El Grito has the feel of having emerged from the artist’s subconscious. Playing with association and resisting fixity, a classic Carrington ploy, this painting formally reveals another side of her vision.
Susan L. Aberth