Leonora Carrington (b. 1917)

Acquired from the artist by the previous owner
Gift to the present owner from the above

The canvas is unlined and well stretched. There is horizontal craquelure throughout the work especially along the bottom edge. There is also a stretcher bar mark along the bottom edge. Under ultraviolet light there is no evidence of inpainting. Overall in very good condition.
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The relationship between Leonora Carrington's visual and written work is nowhere better illustrated than in this remarkable oil on canvas, dated 1964.  The Surrealist leader and poet, André Breton, was delighted with Carrington's fantastical and slightly wicked stories and included her in his landmark anthology Black Humor.  This work bears thematic resemblance to a short story the artist wrote in 1941 while living in New York City, titled White Rabbits, first published in the Surrealist journal View (nos. 9-10, 1941-42). In this tale, the artist turned-around the status quo by transforming rabbits, those most docile of animals, into ravenous meat-eating creatures.

In the 1950s and 1960s Carrington was actively involved in the theater in Mexico and this painting has the feeling of a staged performance.  While ghostly spectators look on from an arena in the background, cages have been opened to let forth a surprising group of creatures. A hybrid monster, part horse, bird, and human, confronts a band of attacking rabbits, to the viewer's quizzical surprise. The delicate pastel tones of the pink sky and green ground lend the scene a fairy tale air redolent of one of the Victorian era nursery rhymes the artist grew up with, full of gleeful violence.

Susan L. Aberth
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY