The BCC is to finance a biographical film about the late British artist Leonora Carrington, an iconic figure who lived a large part of her adult life in Mexico.
The film is set to come out in 2017, the 100th anniversary of Carrington’s birth. The artist died at her home in Mexico City in May 2011.
Carrington turned her back on her wealthy family in Lancashire to move to Paris to join up with the surrealist artistic scene and her lover Max Ernst. She fled to Spain in World War II and ended up in Mexico, where she remarried and continued to paint and sculpt.
While her talents were recognized in Mexico and the United States, little was known of her outside artistic circles in the country of her birth.
Last year, an exhibition of her works at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, “introduced” her to the British public. Reviewers of the show reflected their astonishment that such a talented artist could have been overlooked for so long.