Leonora Carrington (B. 1917)

gouache, ink and pencil on heavy paper

Remedios Varo, Mexico City (gift from the artist)
Sale: Sotheby's Parke Bernet, Mexican Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, May 26, 1977, lot 58, illustrated
Acquired from the above by the previous owner
Sale: Sotheby's, Latin American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, May 29, 1984, lot 101, illustrated
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985 (exhibition catalogue), The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, December 11, 1991-March 1, 1992, p. 13, illustrated

The sheet is affixed to the mat in the upper left and right corners. There are pinholes in the upper left and right corners as well as in the upper center. There are handling smudges along the edges. The colors are vibrant and overall this work is in excellent condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Like all true talismans Tiburón is intimate in scale and cryptic in content, except for the one for whom it is intended. Executed in the creative heat of her new friendship with the painter Remedios Varo in the early forties, Carrington has here provided her cohort with a charm against the evil eye.  Both artists passionately believed in magic and the magical abilities of art and the combustive nature of their artistic partnership fueled new expressive paths for each of them.  Writing and painting were always dual occupations for Carrington and this work is a remarkable example of her ability at times to merge text and image to great effect.  On the paper Carrington writes to Varo that she has made, as promised, a charm for her and suffered a high fever afterwards – the implication being that the two activities are related, one of the dangers of sympathetic magic. 

 

The title, Tiburón, in Spanish means shark*, an appropriately fierce creature to conjure up when warding off evil and close inspection of the work reveals much.  A shark-shaped dirigible sails through the air like a commuter train filled with nonchalant passengers.  A cruel-looking series of fishhooks extend from its mouth as if to catch any stray harmful entities should they approach.  Galloping horses, long a personal emblem of transformation and journeys for Carrington, emerge from the spray of its snout.  Attached below the vehicle are a number of apotropaic devices: two mandrake roots, a stuffed alligator similar to those seen hanging on the ceilings of alchemical laboratories in Renaissance drawings, and three hanged personages.  It is interesting to note that the central figure, a woman, hangs upside down like the figure called The Hanged Man in the Tarot deck.  This female figure of suffering, perhaps the artist herself, is echoed above and will remain a persistent theme in her later work.  After all, both women had arrived in Mexico escaping a war-torn Europe and could finally, in each other's company, psychically recover from years of dislocation and trauma.

 

 

 

* Tiburón is also an island off the coast of Sonora in the Sea of Cortez known as a shark sanctuary.

 

 

 

Susan L. Aberth, art historian and author of Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries, 2004)