Leonora Carrington

Galería de Arte Mexicano, México City

Edward Frank Willis James, Esq., Chichester  (acquired from the above in 1950)

The Edward James Foundation, West Dean, Chichester (1950-1984)

The Mayor Gallery, London (acquired from above)

Ramis Barquet, New York (acquired from above)

Private collection (acquired from above)

Mexico City, Clardecor, S. A,. Leonora Carrington, 1950, no.10

Milan, Palazzo Reale, I Surrealisti, 1989, p. 375, illustrated in the catalogue

Madrid, Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía & Strasbourg, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Lés Surréalistes en exil et les débuts de l'école de New York, 1999-2000, p. 203, illustrated in color in the catalogue,

Rome, Museo del Corso, Max Ernst e i suoi amici surrealisti, 2002, p. 64, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Dallas, The Dallas Museum of Art, Leonora Carrington, What She Might Be, 2007-08, p. 68, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Whitney Chadwick, Leonora Carrington, La Realidad de la imaginación, México, 1994, no. 17, illustrated p. 45

This work is in excellent condition. Original canvas. Under UV light inpainting is visible along the extreme edges to address frame abrasion.
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.

As a paradox, Leonora Carrington's self-portrait The Artist Traveling Incognito, 1949, balances private versus public image, a problem, which grew worse for Carrington after her arrival in Mexico in late 1942. In this self-portrait, Carrington conceals her identity while simultaneously painting it for exhibition. How could she not be recognized under such circumstances? Impossible? Well, almost. Carrington's determination to keep at bay people interested in her - artists, film-makers, journalists, scholars of Surrealism, the myriad curious - hungry to learn about her art and life, and from her wisdom, was not always successful, even until the recent end of her life.

Gradually, Carrington joined other European Surrealist émigrés who had settled in Mexico, becoming a major player in Mexico's artistic milieu. Remedios Varo, whom she had met in Paris, and her husband Benjamin Péret became Leonora's closest friends. They formed a group with a surrealist mindset. Included were Kati and José Horna, Varo's ex-husband Eduardo Lizarraga, and their friend Esteban Francés, who later brought into the group Edward James, the eccentric English poet and collector. To his credit, James was the earliest patron and collector of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte's work, and after meeting Carrington he became her main collector as well. It was thanks to James's intervention that she held her first one-woman exhibition at Pierre Matisse's gallery in New York in 1947, of which Matisse wrote excitedly after the opening night: "the show is greatly admired...." Edward James was also the first owner of La Artista Viaja de Incognito.

The arrival of the Surrealists in Mexico was barely noted in the newspapers. But the interlude of anonymity that Leonora Carrington enjoyed would end after her first exhibition in Mexico, which brought her growing attention. Carrington found significant resistance as she sought a local gallery that would exhibit her unusual imagery, with references to the life of the Faery, her Celtic ancestry or the Italian primitives. It proved difficult, as the art that was selling was born out of the Mexican Revolution. Not one to be stopped, with her usual brand of valor and lack of pretense, on February 23, 1950, she held her one person show in Mexico City in Clardecor, a furniture store on Paseo de la Reforma 226, that belonged to her friends Marguerite "Guite" Larrea and Jacques de Verac. Leonora was not known, so that one of the reviewers of the exhibition referred to her as Leonora Larrington, an amusing coincidence as the show included her self-portrait La Artista Viaja de Incognito, as if granting her wish not to be recognized in her own exhibition.

The image draws on the eighteenth-century Italian Benigno Bossi's portraits of personages whose bodies are constructed with inanimate objects that identify their trade or place of work. Wanting to look nothing like herself, Carrington adds a second body to hers, yet both stand on her two feet. Her face is concealed behind a five-eyed mask, and her shoulders are covered with a Spanish mantilla similar to her mother's. With her left hand she holds the mock head of an added personage, a transparent bubble that also serves as cage for her parrot, Ouspensky, her traveling companion. Her second body wears a loose dress unable to conceal her breasts because they are part of the fabric. She holds an umbrella in the other hand, and her blue-eyed cat, Safiro, her other traveling companion, stands at her feet. "Cats speak with me, they are cleaner than humans," she would say.

We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grimberg, Dallas, for his help in preparing this entry.