New Google Doodle honours bizarre surrealist painter Leonora Carrington

Today’s Google Doodle was based on the work of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. (Source: Google)

Today’s Google Doodle might befuddle most since it shows a crocodile-shaped boat with five small crocodiles aboard and being rowed by a taller sixth crocodile. This is surrealist painter Leonora Carrington’s work, who was born in Lancashire on 6 April 1917, and died there at age 94 on May 2011.

Carrington was considered a contemporary of renowned artists such as Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. The painting, titled ‘How Doth the Little Crocodile’, is symbolic of the artist’s peculiar and wonderful style. In fact, she was also the last surviving linkage to the Surrealist movement that had its origins in Europe, bringing in aspects of magical realism into her body of work. Despite opposition from her wealthy father, Carrington was attracted to art and eventually, eloped with German surrealist painter Max Ernst in 1937.

When Ernst was arrested at the outset of World War II, a traumatised Carrington fled to Spain and eventually travelled to Lisbon, New York City and finally to Mexico City, where she lived until her death in 2011. Aside from painting and sculpting, she also wrote numerous books like Down Below, which talked in detail about her psychotic experiences with drugs such as Luminal and Cardiazol.