Tea and Tequila
Fascinating talk
at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with Joanna Moorhead
author of a biography of her father’s cousin, the Surrealist painter Leonora
Carrington.
This was an
interesting detective story as well as a biography as Joanna told us about how
this relative had been the black sheep of the family who she had initially only
known of though whispered conversations between relatives. She had realised Leonora
had ended up in Mexico but it was only through a chance meeting with a Mexican
art historian at a dinner party that Joanna realised that her aunt was still
alive and a major artist in Mexico.
Joanna told us
the story of Leonora’s life from a debutant in 1935, through her artistic life
in Paris with max Ernst, holiday’s with Lee Millar and Roland Penrose, being in
an asylum in Spain and eventually escaping to Mexico.
The chair of the
event was Joanna Biggs who had edited Leonora’s short stories so the discussion
was interesting about what Leonora’s the art and writing told us about her
life. Biggs was also good at bringing out stories from the first Joanna of
meeting her relative for the first time and building a relationship with her.
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