Leonora Carrington at Tate Liverpool

Leonora Carrington 

Tate Liverpool 

6 March – 31 May 2015 

Tate Liverpool presents the first UK solo exhibition of work by LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917-2011) for over 20 years. Leonora Carrington explores the fantastical world of the painter and internationally celebrated member of the surrealist movement. 

A prolific painter, the exhibition looks at how the artist established her distinctive take on surrealism; characterised by eccentric beings which shift between plant, animal, human and object; between reality and otherworldliness. Taking key paintings as its starting point Leonora Carrington examines Leonora Carrington’s diverse practice and uses the artist’s own words, brought together by Mexican author Chloe Aridjis, to narrate the display.

In the mid–1930s Leonora Carrington turned her back on her upper-class upbringing in northern England, embarking upon a complicated relationship with German artist Max Ernst in France before spending a short time in Spain during the Second World War. Her creative practice at this point encompassed writing short stories, drawing and painting.

It was after arriving in Mexico in 1942 that Leonora Carrington’s practice expanded further as she populated plays, sculptures and textiles with her extraordinary worlds. In 1947 her work was included in an international exhibition of surrealism in New York, where she was the only female British artist featured, establishing her pivotal role within the surrealist movement. In the 1950s and 60s Leonora Carrington broadened her practice and embraced set and costume design for productions including her own, Penelope 1957, and films, for which she designed sets and costumes, as well as performing as an actress.

A major highlight in the exhibition is The Magical World of the Mayas 1964, a 4.5 metre long mural painted by Leonora Carrington for the opening of the new Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City in 1964. On display for the first time outside Mexico it serves as a monument to Leonora Carrington’s relationship with Mexico, the country she adopted as her home. 

Refusing to be constrained or restricted by expectations or conventional limitations, Leonora Carrington’s expanded practice has made her an inspiration to many contemporary artists working across a range of mediums. Her patron Edward James commented in 1975 that ‘she has never relinquished her love of experimentation, the result being that she has been able to diversify and explore a hundred or more techniques for the expression of her creative powers’.  

Leonora Carrington is curated by Francesco Manacorda, Artistic Director and author Chloe Aridjis with Lauren Barnes, Assistant Curator.

With support from the Government of Mexico as part of the Year of Mexico in the UK 2015 and sponsored by Edge Hill University, the UK University of the Year. 

TATE LIVERPOOL

www.tate.org.uk

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Tate Liverpool, 2011-2012

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings 

This exhibition will be on view this year and in 2012 at:

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 8 October 2011 - 15 January 2012
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 11 February 2012 - 28 May 2012
Tate Liverpool, 22 June - 28 October 2012

CY TWONBLY

Untitled 2007

© Cy Twombly. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever 

JMW Turner, Claude Monet and Cy Twombly are three of the greatest painters of the last 150 years. In the autumn of 2011, Moderna Museet will bring together a groundbreaking exhibition focusing on later works by the three artists. The exhibition Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings, curated by JEREMY LEWISON , is organized by MODERNA MUSEET and will tour to Germany and the UK in 2012. 

J. M. W. TURNER (1775-1851) was one of the most innovative painters of the Romantic era, whose works Monet admired on his stay in London in 1871 and challenged in his later depictions of London and Venice. CY TWOMBLY (b 1928) has also had a lifelong interest in Turner and in the last twenty years has demonstrated a strong affinity for the work of CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) the founder of French Impressionism. The exhibition Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings is an unique opportunity to see these three important artists together and what unites them. 

"All three artists have been considered radical in their time and met with negative comment when pushing the boundaries of the conventions of painting. Their late work has a looseness and an intensity that comes from the confidence of age, when notions of finish and completion are modified", says Jeremy Lewison, curator of the exhibition, formerly Director of Collections at Tate and now working as an independent curator. 

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings is an exhibition that examines each artist in some depth, and will introduce their work in new ways to both new audiences and to those already familiar with the artists’ work. The exhibition features more than 60 works, and will examine not only the art historical links and affinities between the painters, but also the common characteristics of and motivations underlying their late style. It highlights modernity and classicism in the work of all three artists, characteristics that will emerge by their unique juxtaposition in this exhibition. In their later phases the three artists are not only preoccupied by mortality and memory but retain an interest in the Romantic outlook and the sublime. 

Works by Turner will mainly be drawn from Tate’s Turner Bequest and works by Monet and Twombly will be drawn from museums and private collections across the world. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag in three language editions, with an in-depth essay by Jeremy Lewison and graphic design by Patric Leo. 

Curator: Jeremy Lewison 

Assistant Curator: Jo Widoff 

MODERNA MUSEET

http://www.modernamuseet.se