Mexico, the cauldron where dreams take flesh: Leonora carrington and magical surrealism

No one knows exactly what she puts in it—perhaps gold dust, herbs gathered under the full moon, or simply that black ink that has flowed from her brushes forever. But one thing is certain: when Leonora Carrington mixes pigments, it is never by chance. Every color, every symbol, every hybrid creature that populates her canvases is an incantation. And Mexico, this country where the dead dance with the living and where Aztec gods mingle with the Virgin of Guadalupe, is the perfect cauldron for boiling her visions.

01When exile becomes a second birth

Imagine a twenty-five-year-old woman arriving in Mexico in 1942, after fleeing war-torn Europe, escaping a Spanish psychiatric asylum, and crossing the Atlantic by cargo ship. She speaks almost no Spanish. All she carries are a few drawings, the traumatic memory of electroshock therapy in Spain, and an enduring obsession with horses—those animals that gallop across her early canvases like messengers between worlds.

Yet within months, this shy Englishwoman will transform. Mexico will not be a land of exile for her, but a magical territory where her wildest dreams finally take shape. In the streets of Mexico City, she discovers a country where surrealism is not an artistic avant-garde, but an everyday reality. Where flower sellers offer bouquets with petals as blue as those in her paintings. Where Baroque churches overflow with saints whose faces resemble demons. Where women wear dresses embroidered with patterns eerily similar to the alchemical symbols she scribbles in her notebooks.

It is here, in this city where colors explode like fireworks, that she will meet Remedios Varo, another Spanish exile who shares her passion for the occult and esoteric cooking recipes. Together, they will turn their kitchens into alchemical laboratories, their brushes into magic wands, and their canvases into doors to other dimensions.

02The kitchen as a laboratory of the invisible

If you had to choose just one painting to understand Leonora Carrington, it might be The Kitchen Garden on the Eyot (1946). A woman—perhaps the artist herself—stands before an open window overlooking a strange garden. Vegetables grow in perfect spirals, kitchen tools float in the air like enchanted objects, and in the foreground, a pot simmers gently, its steam transforming into hybrid shapes.

This is no ordinary kitchen. It is a space of transformation, a place where matter transmutes, where ingredients become spells, where food nourishes the soul as much as the body. Carrington reinvents the myth of the witch, not as a malevolent figure, but as a modern alchemist, a creator who uses the humblest elements—flour, eggs, aromatic herbs—to access deeper truths.

This fascination with the kitchen as a magical space is no accident. In 1940s Mexico, kitchens were still places of oral tradition, where recipes mingled with folk remedies and stories of nahuals. Carrington, who had always been an avid reader of Paracelsus and Renaissance alchemical treatises, saw a natural continuity between preparing meals and brewing potions.

In her paintings, women never cook alone. They are always accompanied by strange creatures—cats with human eyes, birds with oversized beaks, mischievous little demons. These hybrid beings are not mere decorative accessories. They are the true agents of the magic at work. They represent that part of ourselves that eludes reason, that animal and instinctive side that modern society seeks to tame.

03Impossible hybridizations

One of Carrington’s signatures is the impossible creatures that populate her canvases. Women with bird heads, men with horse bodies, children with elongated limbs. These hybridizations are not mere surrealist whims. They speak to something profound about the human condition.

Consider The Giantess (1947), that monumental canvas where an immense woman, both maternal and terrifying, looms over a banquet scene. Her body is covered in feathers, her hands transform into bird talons, and her face expresses a serenity almost divine. Around her, tiny figures go about their business, indifferent to her presence.

This giant is not a monster. She is an archetypal figure, a representation of that part of ourselves that transcends us, that connects us to cosmic forces. Carrington, who studied Celtic mythologies and alchemical texts, saw in her an incarnation of the Great Goddess, that maternal and creative figure that predates all religions.

In post-revolutionary Mexico, where pre-Hispanic traditions blend with Catholicism, these hybridizations take on a particular resonance. Aztec gods were often depicted with animal attributes—Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent, Huitzilopochtli the hummingbird warrior. By creating her own hybrid creatures, Carrington was not merely extending the surrealist tradition. She was inventing a personal mythology that dialogued with the ancestral beliefs of the country that had adopted her.

04Surrealism as a universal language

When we think of surrealism, we often picture the Parisian cafés of the 1920s, the exquisite corpses, Dalí’s melting clocks. But Carrington’s surrealism is of a different nature. It is not an intellectual game, nor an aesthetic provocation. It is a universal language, a way of communicating with the invisible.

In Mexico, she found fertile ground to develop this approach. The city itself seemed surreal—a mix of modernity and archaism, the sacred and the profane, life and death. In the markets, sugar skulls for the Day of the Dead were sold alongside voodoo dolls. In the churches, saints had faces resembling pre-Columbian masks. In the streets, lottery vendors shouted numbers that seemed plucked from a dream.

Carrington absorbed all of this. She integrated elements of Mexican popular culture into her canvases—ex-votos, retablos, traditional textile patterns. But she did not merely copy them. She reinterpreted them through her own lens, creating a unique synthesis between Europe and Latin America.

Her surrealism was not Breton’s, who sought to liberate the unconscious through techniques like automatic writing. Hers was more organic, more rooted in the everyday. For her, surrealism was not an artistic movement, but a way of life. A way of seeing the world as a place where anything is possible, where the boundaries between reality and imagination do not exist.

05The studio as sanctuary

If you had been able to enter Leonora Carrington’s studio in Mexico City, you would have discovered a space that resembled a sanctuary more than a workplace. The walls were covered with paintings, of course, but also astrological charts, alchemical drawings, and yellowed photographs of her surrealist friends.

At the center of the room stood a large wooden table, always cluttered with brushes, tubes of paint, sketchbooks, and sometimes actual alchemical ingredients—dried herbs, crystals, vials of mysterious liquids. Carrington believed in the magical properties of certain materials. She used real gold in her paintings, mixed natural pigments with metallic powders, and sometimes even incorporated organic elements into her canvases.

Around this table, a small community of artists and friends gathered regularly. There was Remedios Varo, of course, but also Kati Horna, the Hungarian photographer, and Benjamin Péret, the surrealist poet. Together, they held tarot readings, alchemical experiments, and even rituals inspired by Mexican traditions.

This studio was more than just a place of creation. It was a space of resistance, a refuge against a world that seemed increasingly rational and disenchanted. In this magical den, Carrington and her friends could continue to believe that art had the power to transform reality.

06The legacy of a magician

Today, when we look at Leonora Carrington’s canvases, we are struck by their relevance. In an era where contemporary art often seems disembodied, where digital installations and conceptual performances dominate galleries, her work stands as a powerful reminder of what art can be: a door to the invisible, a language for communicating with what transcends us.

Her influence can be seen in the work of many contemporary artists. Julie Curtiss, for example, revisits her hybrid creatures and dreamlike atmospheres. Genesis Belanger creates installations that evoke her magical kitchens. And in the world of fashion, designers like Alexander McQueen have drawn from her universe to create collections that seem to step straight out of her paintings.

But beyond her artistic influence, Carrington leaves us with a deeper lesson. In a world that seeks to rationalize, explain, and control everything, she reminds us that there is another way of seeing. One where magic is not just a stylistic effect, but a tangible reality. Where dreams are not mere illusions, but forces capable of shaping the world.

Perhaps that is why her paintings continue to speak to us, decades after their creation. Because they are not just images. They are incantations. Open doors to other dimensions. Proof that somewhere between Mexico and Ireland, between surrealism and magic, there exists a space where anything is possible.

And if you look long enough at one of her paintings, you might see, as she did, the walls of your own reality begin to melt.