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The British-born painter Leonora Carrington spent much of her adult life in Mexico, where she developed a richly symbolic visual language incorporating mythology, alchemy and the occult. In the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition in France, the Musée du Luxembourg presents approximately 126 works by the increasingly celebrated surrealist, tracing both her inner and outer journeys. The exhibition considers Carrington’s entire career, from her early affinity for classical Italian art and the Renaissance through her surrealist years in France and period as a cult figure in Mexico, positioning her as an artist continuously in search of self-knowledge. Her paintings feature chimeric animals, notably white horses and hyenas, as well as robed figures, cauldrons and fantastical beasts rendered with a jewel-like precision she achieved through egg tempera on gessoed panels, a technique borrowed from the masters she admired. These fairytale-like scenes encode a deeply personal symbolism that explores themes of psychic transformation, female creative power and the fluid boundary between human and animal worlds.
Leonora Carrington, “Artes 110,” 1944. Private collection. © 2026 Estate of Leonora Carrington / ADAGP, Paris © NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale
