Surreal Friends
28th Sep 2010 - 12th Dec 2010
Surreal Friends celebrates the artistic achievements, extraordinary lives and enduring friendship of three leading women surrealists: British painter and sculptor Leonora Carrington, Spanish painter Remedios Varo and Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
 Leonora Carrington at her Easel, 1956Kati Horna |
 Kati Horna in the Studio of Josef P�sci, Budapest, 1933Attr. Robert Capa |
 Remedios Varo at her Easel, Mexico, 1963Kati Horna |
 The Old Maids, 1947Leonora Carrington |
 Washbasin at Seven O�Clock in the Morning, Barcelona, April 1937Kati Horna |
 Harmony, 1956Remedios Varo |
The exhibition takes the form of three separate displays, which reveal the artists' work and provide a startling insight into the often problematic place of the women on the fringes of the surrealist movement.
For differing reasons the women were all targets of the Nazi party. They fled Europe early in the Second World War and came together in Mexico City in 1943. Mexico offered them freedom to explore their art in a way that had not been possible in Europe.
Leonora Carrington developed a highly distinctive style. Her complex paintings and sculptures feature humans, animals and fabled creatures, referencing fairy tales, myths and her Catholic upbringing. Remedios Varo produced a wealth of paintings inspired by her new home in Mexico, full of magic, humour and illusion. Kati Horna became a photojournalist for various newspapers as well as undertaking surrealist photography projects. Her work includes photographs of Paris in the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War, as well as images of Mexico that document the lives of her close friends Carrington and Varo.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by Pallant House with Lund Humphries, London, and available from the Sainsbury Centre Gallery Shop.
Surreal Friends is curated by Stefan van Raay, Director of Pallant House gallery, Joanna Moorhead, award-winning journalist and author, and Teresa Arcq, art historian and Varo specialist.
Autumn exhibition admission �4, concessions �2; family admission �8, concessions �6; school groups �1 per child. Free to Sainsbury Centre Friends.
For more information about the exhibition, please visit the Surreal Friends websiteOrganised by
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Marketing sponsors for the Surreal Friends exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre
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The exhibition has also been supported by The Aldama Foundation, the Edward James Foundation, Catherine and Franck Petitgas, Mr Keith Clark and the Mexican Embassy in the UK.
