About this time last year I was in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí traveling to the small town of Xilitla to experience their version of Day of the Dead, called Xantolo in the local dialect.
Our first stop was the city of San Luis Potosí. The highlight of this lovely city was visiting the Carrington Museum, housed in one wing of the Centro De Las Artes, a former state penitentiary. The Carrington Museum opened in March 2018. An excellent article about the museum and her life is published here.
A Carrington renaissance has arrived in Mexico, as another Carrington Museum soon followed in Xilitla, which opened the week that we arrived in October 2018. Both museums are spectacular and should be on the bucket list of any art lover.
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was British-born and became a major surrealist artist, spending much of her adult life in Mexico. She spent time in the town of Xilitla, where she would visit friend Edward James, whose surrealist sculpture garden there is now a major tourist attraction.
Carrington's art is often whimsical in the spirit of Dr. Seuss. In fact, Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was a surrealist in Paris, friends with Dali and others before his career as a children's book author, as noted here.
A Carrington sculpture at the Carrington Museum in San Luis Potosí. Note the high walls of the former prison:
More smaller sculptures in the Carrington Museum. These smaller sculptures were housed in former prison cells:
Alto. (Stop)
If Pigs Could Fly:
The Mandolin Player:
Mother Is Always Right:
Necromancer, in the Leonora Carrington Museum in Xilitla:
A portrait of Leonora Carrington at the museum in Xilitla:
A sculpture in Edward James' surrealistic garden, Las Pozas, in Xilitla. Unfortunately I was not feeling well the day I visited this garden, so took few photos. More photos can be seen in this article.
While in Xilitla, we stayed in a house built by Plutarco Gastelum, who constructed Las Pozas for Edward James. The house is also slightly surrealist and whimsical. It is owned by Gastelum's granddaughter, Leonora, named, of course, after Leonora Carrington!
