The Invisible Painting : My Memoir of Leonora Carrington

Since her death in 2011, the memory of the widely renowned Surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington has been reinvented and reconstructed many times over. In this memoir, her son Gabriel Weisz Carrington draws on remembered conversations and events to demythologise Leonora and declare her not an icon or a goddess but an artist, first and foremost

. For Gabriel, Leonora becomes a ghost, prompting him to ask how writing can retrieve someone we loved. The book strives to depict a complex and very real Surrealist creator, exploring Leonora not simply in relation to her romantic partners or social milieus but as the artist she always was. A textured portrait of Leonora emerges from conversations, memories, stories and her engagement with the books that she read. Using the act of writing to process and understand the death of his mother, the author has produced a moving and fascinating account of life, art, love and loss.