Art by Leonora Carrington

Carrington was a British-born Surrealist painter and writer whose early life reads almost like one of her own paintings: a relationship with Max Ernst that ended when he was interned by French authorities as an enemy alien at the outbreak of World War II, followed by her own escape into Spain, a breakdown, and involuntary confinement in a psychiatric institution, an experience she later wrote about directly in her memoir "Down Below." She eventually settled permanently in Mexico, where she built a long, prolific career filled with hybrid animal-human figures, alchemical symbolism, and folklore, culminating in later life in a series of public sculptures installed along Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma.