Talk | Monsieur Ozenfant's Academy: Charles Darwent, Joanna Moorhead and Edward Behrens

11 July 2025 
Talk starts at 6pm 

 

Join us for a conversation with art historian and critic Charles Darwent, author of the newly published book Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy (2025 /Art Publishing); journalist and Leonora Carrington biographer Joanna Moorhead; and Edward Behrens, editor of Apollo magazine. 

 

The event takes place within the context of the group exhibition Seeds of Surrealism: Women of Monsieur Ozenfant's Academy at Richard Saltoun Gallery London,  spotlighting four pioneering Surrealists—Leonora CARRINGTON, Stella SNEAD, Anne SAÏD, and Sari DIENES—whose practices were shaped by the radical yet overlooked Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts, active in London from 1936 to 1939.

 

The exhibition marks the launch of Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy, a new book by critic and historian Darwent, published by Art Publishing, and celebrates the gallery’s representation of the Estate of Stella Snead.

 

RSVP HERE 

Please note that this event has limited capacity. RSVP above is essential. 

 

 

 

Charles Darwent is an art critic and author. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Art Newspaper and Art Review, and was the chief art critic for the Independent on Sunday from 1999–2013. He is the author of Surrealists in New York (2023), Josef Albers: Life and Work (2018) and Mondrian in London: How British Art Nearly Became Modern (2012)

 
Joanna Moorhead is the author of The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (Virago 2019) which tells the story of why and how her artist cousin escaped the family she felt stifled by, and found a new life in Mexico - which is where Moorhead found her in 2006, decades after Carrington had fled England to join the Surrealists in pre-war Paris. Carrington, who is now the highest-selling female artist in British history, trained at the Amedee Ozenfant Academy in London in the mid-1930s - and it was a connection there that led to her meeting with the man who would go on to be her lover and a pivotal figure in her life, Max Ernst. 
 
Moorhead is a journalist who has written regularly for the Guardian and Observer for more than 30 years.  Another of her books, Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington (Thames and Hudson, 2023) considers Carrington’s work from an art historical viewpoint.
 
Edward Behrens is the editor of Apollo.