Major Arcana – The Tarot of Leonora Carrington
The British-born artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the more fascinating figures to emerge from the Surrealist movement. As both a writer and painter, she was championed early by André Breton and joined the exiled Surrealists in New York, before settling in Mexico in 1943. The magical themes of Carrington’s otherworldly paintings are well-known, but the recent discovery of a suite of tarot designs she created for the Major Arcana was a revelation for scholars and fans of Carrington alike. Drawing inspiration from the Tarot of Marseille and the popular Waite-Smith deck, Carrington brings her own approach and style to this timeless subject, creating a series of iconic images. Executed on thick board, brightly coloured and squarish in format, Carrington’s Major Arcana shines with gold and silver leaf, exploring tarot themes through what Gabriel Weisz Carrington describes as a ‘surrealist object’.
This tantalising discovery, made by the curator Tere Arcq and scholar Susan Aberth, has placed greater emphasis upon the role of the tarot in Carrington’s creative life and has led to fresh research in this area.
Speaker Bio
Susan L. Aberth is the Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College. She received her B.A. from UCLA, M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In 2022 she received a Curatorial Research grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for travel in connection with research into the esoteric traditions in the Americas. Her book publications include The Tarot of Leonora Carrington (2020, reissued in an expanded edition 2022) co-authored with Mexican curator Tere Arcq; Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (2004, Lund Humphries & Turner, Spain). She has contributed to numerous books and exhibition catalogues: Surrealism and Magic, Guggenheim Venice (2022); Hilma af Klint (Zwirner Gallery, 2022), Olga de Amaral (Lisson Gallery, 2022), Not Without My Ghosts (2020, Traveling exhibition in England); Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Juanita Guccione: Otherwhere (Napa Valley Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos Magicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017), as well as to Journal of Surrealism of the Americas, Artforum, Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, and Black Mirror.
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