From British Sorcery to El Mundo Mágico De Los Mayas: Leonora Carrington’s Cultural Hybridity

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the most exciting, complex, and hypnotic artists from the twentieth century. Throughout her literary career, Carrington produced 10 extraordinary books in which she invites the reader to join her in a surrealistic and mythical exploration of the inner soul, sexual identity, and many other topics that cannot be defined except as universal. As Gloria Orenstein remarked in her introduction to Carrington’s The Oval Lady, “Leonora Carrington’s art and writings express the mystery of being through occult parables whose true meaning becomes accessible to those who acquire initiation into the specific form of symbolism that her works display.” This chapter argues that in order to decipher the complex hieroglyphics to which Orenstein also refers, and understand the cabalistic symbols which populate Carrington’s prose, it is indispensable to pay attention to the mental breakdown that she suffered in Spain while escaping from World War II, as well as her hybrid condition as a British and Mexican woman and artist. The chapter also analyzes how Carrington’s exile and the Mexican culture in which she became fully rooted shape the author’s complex literary corpus.