(Above) Remedios Varo, Creation of the Birds (Creacion de las aves) (1957). Oil on masonite. © Remedios Varo, DACS/VEGAP, (ex: Chichester, Norwich) (2010)
Exhibition: Surreal Friends – Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until September 12 2010
Surreal Friends starts with a nervous breakdown and then gets progressively madder. It took a hospital admission in 1940 for painter Leonora Carrington to harness her imagination, producing some of the most vivid and fantastical scenes in 20th century art.
Human figures with animal heads, shrouded forms with coal-like eyes and demonic entities with horns all appear in her work. Once-familiar creatures such as cats or horses are distorted, expanded or shrunk to an uncanny degree.
Most weird of all are the crone-like old women with claws for feet and shaggy manes which cover the length of their bodies. By the time they appear in tempura works such as Tell The Bees, you don't know whether to be afraid or amused by these visions.
Leonora Carrington, The Giantess or Guardian of the Egg (1950). Tempera on wood panel. Private Collection. © ARS, NY and DACS, London
Her friend Remedios Varo, also in the show, offers little comfort. Her landscapes are just as dreamlike, and equally deformed. She gives society women wheels instead of legs. She gives heart patients locks in their chest. Other figures she mutates into geometric forms.
Paintings such as The Creation of Birds show real inventiveness. A slender, owl-like painter paints with the aid of a violin string and a beam of moonlight. The fine brush strokes used by both Varo and Carrington give such scenes an intense clarity.
The third friend in the show, photographer Kati Horna, is more down to earth. She makes several forays into surreal photomontage, but for the main part is happy to document reality.
Kati Horna, Leonora Carrington at her easel, Mexico (1956). Private Collection, Mexico. © Kati Horna, all rights reserved, 2010
It results in some memorable images of the Spanish Civil War, where she risked her life to report from the front line, and her image of prostrate inmates in the courtyard of a mental asylum is as haunting as any painting.
Horna also takes some fascinating portrait shots from the artistic milieu to which she, Carrington and Varo belonged. These three women met in Mexico, where they lived in exile from the time of the Second World War. This is a rich backdrop to an extensive, long overdue, and beguiling show.
Open 10am-5pm Tuesday-Saturday (8pm Thursday, from 12.30pm Sunday). Admission £2.30-£7.50, family ticket £17.
Click here for a full list of events accompanying the exhibition.
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