Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna - an English painter, a Spanish painter and a Hungarian photographer - met in Mexico City in 1943. All three had recently fled war-torn Europe and together they shared memories of Paris, Surrealism, the Spanish Civil War, and the outbreak of World War II.

Surreal Friends, this summer's season of international exhibitions, celebrates the friendship of these three women. It represents the first substantial display of Carringon's work in Britain for 19 years, and the first ever comprehensive showing of works by her friends Varo and Horna in the UK.

Fittingly, the exhibition will take place in Chichester, near West Dean, the estate of the Surrealist patron Edward James. A supporter and friend of all three artists, James spent much time in Mexico, both in the capital and in his Surrealist garden Las Pozas in Xilitla, San Luis Potosi.

Surreal Friends marks the double anniversary of two momentous events in Mexican history: the Bicentenary of Mexican Independence from Spain and the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution, both in 2010.