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@mdstamper.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 9:34 PM

“Green Tea” by Leonora Carrington (British) - Oil on canvas / 1942 - Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #LeonoraCarrington #Carrington #Surrealism #BritishArt #MoMA #ModernArt #art #artText #arte #painting #BritishArtist #MuseumOfModernArt #1940sArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists

British artist Leonora Carrington painted “Green Tea” during a turbulent period of displacement and reinvention. After Nazi authorities imprisoned her partner, artist Max Ernst, during World War II, Carrington fled France for Spain. There she experienced a psychological crisis and was confined against her will in a psychiatric institution in Santander, where she underwent harsh treatments. She later escaped her family’s plans for further institutionalization, traveled to New York, and painted this work shortly afterward.

Across a strangely manicured green landscape, a solitary woman stands wrapped from shoulders to ankles in black-and-white, cowhide-like fabric. Her arms disappear beneath the constricting folds, while her pale, masklike face and bare feet remain exposed. Beside her, four small antlered heads rise from a purple vessel. Farther right, a reddish doglike creature and a white horse are tethered to slender trees that seem to grow from their own elongated tails. Behind them stretches an intricate countryside of hedges, paths, miniature trees, towers, and distant fantastic structures beneath a blue sky. Along the bottom edge, the earth appears sliced open, revealing a shadowy underground realm inhabited by bats, birds, bodies, and mysterious cocoons.

The bound central figure has often been interpreted as Carrington herself. Its enveloping garment evokes both protection and restraint, making the surrounding open landscape feel paradoxically inaccessible. The white horse carries particular autobiographical resonance: horses recur throughout Carrington’s art and writing as figures of freedom, transformation, and rebellious energy. Here, however, even the horse is chained.

The serene English-looking countryside coexists with impossible animals, ritualistic objects, and an ominous world literally beneath the surface. The painting embodies a central Surrealist impulse: ordinary appearances conceal unruly inner realities.

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