"VILLA PILAR": A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN WORK BY LEONORA CARRINGTON, PAINTED DURING HER HOSPITALIZATION IN SPAIN, COMES TO LIGHT

Faro Santander, the new art center in the city of Santander, will present Leonora Carrington: el surrealismo sintomático beginning September 8 — the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the artistic work produced during her hospitalization at Dr. Morales's sanatorium in Santander by the painter, writer, and visionary Leonora Carrington (Lancashire, England, 1917 – Mexico City, Mexico, 2011). The exhibition marks a milestone with the public unveiling, the result of research by the Faro Santander team, of the oil on canvas known as Villa Pilar, which the artist dedicated and gave to her physician upon leaving the sanatorium and which has remained hidden for decades.

The painting belongs to the Morales family and is now being shown publicly for the first time, offering a deeper and richer understanding of a crucial period in Carrington's career. The work, which depicts four anthropomorphic creatures characteristic of the artist's imagination, had never previously been exhibited or published. Daniel Vega, director of Faro Santander, said: "During her stay in Santander, Carrington conceived one of the most harrowing autobiographical accounts in twentieth-century literature, Memorias de abajo (Down Below, 1944), and produced a series of drawings and paintings that condense the full intensity of that experience."

Co-organized with the Freud Museum in London, Leonora Carrington: el surrealismo sintomático is the first exhibition to bring together a selection of drawings from the sketchbooks she made during her time at the sanatorium, works that have until now been scattered across different collections. This period begins with the artist's dramatic flight from Nazi-occupied France and her subsequent hospitalization at the sanatorium of Dr. Luis Morales in Santander. As part of her treatment there — from August 24, 1940 to January 1, 1941 — medical staff encouraged Carrington to draw in order to "organize her thoughts and explain herself to him." The artist also worked independently in her sketchbooks, producing numerous pencil drawings and two oil paintings: Down Below and the work known as Villa Pilar.

"These works were produced under circumstances entirely unlike anything Carrington had ever experienced in her life," notes exhibition curator Vanessa Boni. "Villa Pilar is an oil on canvas depicting, against a greenish background with a volcanic landscape, four creatures: the free horse — the eternal symbol of Leonora's alter ego — alongside the rebellious hyena, the peacock — symbol of immortality and resurrection — and the white guardian dog." The work will be displayed alongside the emblematic canvas Down Below, which depicts the sanatorium grounds populated by residents transformed into hybrid human-animal creatures, a painting the artist dedicated and gave in 1941 in Madrid to the Mexican diplomat Renato Leduc, who helped her escape to New York. It will be the first time the two paintings have been exhibited together in the very city where Leonora Carrington created them.

Carrington referred to this period of her life as "down below" (allá abajo), describing it as an experience akin to "being dead." Her evocation of the sanatorium as a mythical underworld serves as the guiding metaphor for the exhibition.

Leonora Carrington: el surrealismo sintomático will be on view from September 9, 2026 to January 10, 2027 at Faro Santander, Paseo de Pereda 9–12, 39004 Santander (Cantabria), Spain.