In 1937, one year after her mother gave her a book featuring the surrealist paintings of Max Ernst, she met the artist in person. Soon after, Carrington and the then-married Ernst settled in southern France, where in 1938 she completed her first major painting, Self-Portrait (The Inn of the Dawn Horse).

Following Ernst’s imprisonment by the Nazis, Carrington fled to Spain, where she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Madrid. She eventually took refuge at the Mexican embassy in Lisbon and, through her marriage to the diplomat and poet Renato Leduc, traveled to the Americas, first settling in New York and later in Mexico.

There, she married photographer Imre Weiss and had two sons. Carrington spent the rest of her life in Mexico City, within a circle of like-minded artists that included Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Her published works include the novel The Hearing Trumpet (1976), two collections of short stories, and Down Below(Greek edition: Ars Nocturna, 2020), a memoir of her confinement in a psychiatric hospital.

The Milk of Dreams, a collection of illustrated stories written for her children, gave its title to the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), bringing renewed attention to Carrington and her work.