Leonora Carrington

Gabriel Weisz Carrington

The Stone Door is an omen, an incantation, and an adventure story rolled into one. Built in layers like a puzzle box, it is the tale of two people, of love and the Zodiac and the Kabbalah, of Transylvania and Mesopotamia converging at the Caucasus, of a mad Hungarian King named Böles Kilary and of a woman’s discovery of an initiatory code that leads to a Cyclopean obstacle, to love, self and awareness, to the great stone door of Kescke and beyond.

Written at the end of World War II but not published until 1977 and long unavailable, The Stone Door is at once a celebration of the union of the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington and her husband, the Hungarian-born photographer Chiki Weisz, and an argument for the unification of the male and the female as a means of liberating the human race.

The Stone Door

Since her death in 2011, the legendary Surrealist Leonora Carrington has been reconstructed and reinvented many times over. In this book, Gabriel Weisz Carrington draws on remembered conversations and events to demythologise his mother, revealing the woman and the artist behind the iconic persona. He travels between Leonora’s native England and adopted homeland of Mexico, making stops in New York and Paris and meeting some of the remarkable figures she associated with, from Max Ernst and André Breton to Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. At the same time, he strives to depict a complex and very real Surrealist creator, exploring Leonora not simply in relation to her romantic partners or social milieus but as the artist she always was. A textured portrait emerges from conversations, memories, stories and Leonora’s engagement with the books that she read. Using the act of writing to process and understand the death of his mother, the author has produced a moving and fascinating account of life, art, love and loss.

My memoir of Leonora Carrington

The invisible painting

Gabriel Weisz

El eje del libro concibe el cuerpo como una herramienta de acercamiento a todo texto literario y también como parte del mismo. La disertación gira alrededor de dos premisas: el cuerpo como modalidad de la literatura que introduce el tema de la corporalidad y el texto funcionando como cuerpo, ubicando a éste como sustancia “textual” que influye en el lector. El autor nos regresa así a la ecuación básica de la comunicación, emisor-receptor, texto y cuerpo, una relación comunicativa; ambos como signos a interpretar y con la capacidad de cambiar de rol e influir en el otro.

Gabriel Weisz Carrington

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