- She was expelled from two schools for rebellious behavior as a child, and was sent to Florence by her parents, where she attended Penrose Academy of Art. She first encountered surrealist art in Paris at age 10.
- Her partner, Max Ernst, had to flee the Nazis after getting arrested once for being a “hostile alien” and once for his “degenerate” artwork. After he left she had a psychotic break and threatened to murder Hitler, for which she was admitted into a Spanish asylum where she was horribly abused. She was eventually discharged into the care of a “keeper” and told her parents had ordered her to be shipped to a sanatorium in South Africa. On the way there, they stopped in Portugal, where she escaped to the Mexican Embassy. There she met up with Renato Leduc, a Mexican ambassador (and bullfighting buddy of Pablo Picasso), who had agreed to marry her so that she would receive the immunity of a diplomat’s wife. Meanwhile, Ernst had married the woman who helped him free the Nazis, Peggy Guggenheim.
- She was involved in the Mexican women’s liberation movement in the 1970’s.
Story: After escaping to New York with Leduc, her new husband who she had just met, Lenora continues to struggle with extant mental health issues and trauma from her time in the asylum, as well as a desire to reunite with Ernst, who she has no way of contacting. While she is trying to work through all of this and return to making art, Leduc seems to expect her to fulfill the role of a wife, which was not the agreement she had thought she was entering.