Leonora in the Morning Light

Defiant, brilliant, and untamable, Leonora Carrington refused to live by anyone’s rules but her own. In the charged atmosphere of 1930s Paris, she falls under the spell of the Surrealist movement —and into a passionate, volatile love affair with the German artist Max Ernst. Together, they create a world where art and life blur, surrounded by icons like André Breton and Salvador Dalí, and build an otherworldly refuge in the south of France filled with sculpted creatures and strange, living dreams. But as war engulfs Europe, their fantasy shatters. Ernst is arrested as an enemy alien, and Leonora is thrust into a nightmare of loss, madness, and survival. Fleeing to Spain, she spirals into psychological torment and endures brutal institutional treatment. Emerging scarred but unbroken, Leonora finds her way to Mexico—a place of magic and rebirth—where she reclaims her art, her identity, and her freedom.

Leonora in the Morning Light is the story of a woman who turned trauma into transcendence, creating beauty from chaos and forging a legacy that changed the history of modern art, making her currently the highest-selling female British artist.