gouache, watercolor, graphite and white chalk on cardboard

Galería de Pinturas Cristobal, Mexico City
Sale: Christie's, Paris, Art d'Amérique Latine, June 10, 2004, lot 69, illustrated in color
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Mexico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Leonora Carrington: una retrospectiva, September-November, 1994, p. 120, no. 57, illustrated

The board is slightly bowed in the upper right corner. There is a 1 in. diagonal scratch in the lower center possibly done by the artist at work. Overall 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.

Leonora Carrington first began to work with Alejandro Jodorowsky, the iconoclastic Chilean director, playwright and filmmaker, in 1957 when he staged her play Pénélope in Mexico City. Carrington's interest in theater manifested itself early when, with the surrealists in Paris, she wrote a number of plays. During the 1950s she became very involved with the theater in Mexico and designed sets and costumes for her plays and those of others. Likewise her paintings of this period often have the appearance of theatrical backdrops with figures cavorting within them like actors onstage. She made a number of sketches for Eugene Ionesco's dark play dealing with death, El rey se muere, which was directed by Jodorowsky in the late sixties. This grisaille work on paper captures some of the ghostly ambiance of the play, with a few Mexican touches thrown in. For example, we see a large bat accompanying the king down the staircase. In Mayan myth, bats are associated with the underworld and Carrington had recently spent a number of months with the Maya in Chiapas, researching a mural she later executed in 1965 for the National Museum of Anthropology. Some of the creatures she painted in that mural have wandered into this scene, not surprisingly since Carrington's mythical world was fluid and liked to cross borders. The architecture appears inhabited by spectral entities and the dramatic central stairway is placed before a setting planetary orb that lends the scene a grim illumination. Like an ironic version of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, an author Carrington adored, the cavernous space is in a merry state of decrepitude. Riders on hoꦿrses appear to be traveling through walls, their progress unimpeded in this liminal space. As a final humorous touch a white telephone in the foregrou⛎nd tempts the viewer, of either the play or the drawing, to "call in" and join the fun.

 

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