Lot Essay
Clean Up At Once, Said the Archbishop was among the twenty-eight works that Leonora Carrington exhibited with Pierre Loeb in her first one-woman show in Paris in 1952. Carrington's work had been seen in the continent only in Surrealist group exhibitions, since her departure for Mexico twelve years earlier. The show would be Carrington's rapprochement with Europe, the world that had nurtured her creative force. The public would see a comprehensive selection of works set aside during a seven year period including paintings, sculptures, objects and masks. The exhibition was organized by Marie Cuttoli, best known for her early sponsorship of tapestries based on paintings by Braque, Matisse, Leger, Le Corbusier, and many other modern artists; and Loeb himself, who was considered a groundbreaking dealer, giving first shows to unknowns such as Balthus, Ernst, Brauner, Giacometti and many others who became spokepersons for their generation.
Clean Up At Once conjures up a scene from Carrington's childhood. Carrington was named after her aunt Leonora, a sister of her mother's. The young Leonora not only inherited her aunt's name, but also her aunt's interest in the mystical and a relentless personality. Aunt Leonora was a Catholic nun who devoted her life to doing hard work. She died in her nineties, still scrubbing floors in the convent. Aunt Leonora was also remembered by her memorable quarrels with the Bishop. In Clean Up At Once the Bishop and the Nun stand in the midst of a dark cellar; the menagerie and objects that surround them, lit from within, give the scene an eerie glow. A teapot, as well as some cherries, have fallen to the ground and the Bishop uses it as an excuse to create a power struggle with the Nun. Their eyes meet as he shouts an order, attempting to show who rules. But aunt Leonora, staring back, is not moving: and he can't make her do a thing.
After the exhibition in France, Leonora Carrington visited her mother in England and gave her the painting.
Dr. Salomn Grimberg
Dallas, April 6, 1998
Clean Up At Once conjures up a scene from Carrington's childhood. Carrington was named after her aunt Leonora, a sister of her mother's. The young Leonora not only inherited her aunt's name, but also her aunt's interest in the mystical and a relentless personality. Aunt Leonora was a Catholic nun who devoted her life to doing hard work. She died in her nineties, still scrubbing floors in the convent. Aunt Leonora was also remembered by her memorable quarrels with the Bishop. In Clean Up At Once the Bishop and the Nun stand in the midst of a dark cellar; the menagerie and objects that surround them, lit from within, give the scene an eerie glow. A teapot, as well as some cherries, have fallen to the ground and the Bishop uses it as an excuse to create a power struggle with the Nun. Their eyes meet as he shouts an order, attempting to show who rules. But aunt Leonora, staring back, is not moving: and he can't make her do a thing.
After the exhibition in France, Leonora Carrington visited her mother in England and gave her the painting.
Dr. Salomn Grimberg
Dallas, April 6, 1998