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Guardian journalist Joanna Moorhead tells the story of her lost relation, debutante Leonora Carrington, who ran away to Mexico and became a significant Surrealist artist and national treasure in her adopted land.

Moorhead set off to discover more after learning that her father’s cousin – rarely spoken of by her family – was now a famous artist in Mexico after disappearing decades earlier. Carrington died in 2011 but, in the years before her death, Moorhead spoke with her many times about a life that saw her travel in the 1930s from London to France with her lover, Max Ernst, spend time in an asylum, work with artists such as Dali in New York and end up as a recluse in Mexico City. Carrington was one of the last-surviving members of the Surrealist movement, a founder of the women’s liberation movement in Mexico and a novelist and great artist.