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Leonora Carrington

Stella Snead and Her Cat, 1941

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011, English with Mexican citizenship

Title

Stella Snead and Her Cat

Year

1941

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

61 x 45.4 cm (24 x 17 7/8 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

inscribed on the stretcher by Stella Snead: Leonora's of me

Type

  • Paintings

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

2019.54

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

When Stella Snead (1910–2006) met fellow painter Leonora Carrington at the London art academy of the French Cubist artist Amédée Ozenfant in 1936, she was immediately struck by Carrington’s mischievousness. Both excellent draftswomen, the two shared a growing interest in Surrealist art and poetry and a belief in the spiritual nature of animals. By the time they met again in New York in 1941, Carrington had developed a personal Surrealist vocabulary drawn from her own emotional experiences. Here her meticulous rendering of Snead’s proudly athletic figure signifies physical freedom. Clothed in a transparent sweater and leggings, Snead sits weightlessly outside an enclosed Renaissance structure, which evokes past cultural restraints. Guarded by an observant cat, she reaches toward a nautilus shell whose spiraling compartments suggest life’s unfolding mysteries.

Paula and Leonard Granoff Galleries

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Stella Snead and Her Cat with the accession number of 2019.54. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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