A recently discovered painting by surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, titled *Villa Pilar* (1940), will be publicly displayed for the first time this summer in London. Carrington created the work while confined in a Spanish psychiatric hospital during World War II, after fleeing Nazi-occupied France and suffering a psychological breakdown. The painting depicts the hospital as a symbolic underworld and was given to her psychiatrist, Dr. Luis Morales, as a parting gift. It remained in his family for decades until researchers rediscovered it while preparing an exhibition for the Faro Santander arts center. The work will debut at the Freud Museum in London as part of the exhibition *Leonora Carrington – the Symptomatic Surreal*, which has been extended through August before traveling to Spain.
This discovery matters because it adds a crucial early chapter to Carrington’s biography and artistic development, illustrating how trauma and psychiatric treatment shaped her surrealist vision. Carrington, who later became a feminist icon and a leading figure in Mexican surrealism, has seen her market value soar—one of her paintings sold for £22.5 million in 2024, a record for a UK-born female artist. The exhibition also highlights the intersection of art and psychoanalysis, fittingly hosted at the Freud Museum, and underscores ongoing efforts to recover and contextualize works by women artists long marginalized by the male-dominated surrealist movement.