A long-lost painting by British Mexican Surrealist Leonora Carrington, titled *Villa Pilar* (1940), will make its public debut at London’s Freud Museum this summer. The work was rediscovered with an heir of Dr. Luis Morales, the psychiatrist who treated Carrington at a psychiatric hospital in Santander, Spain, where she was institutionalized after a mental breakdown following her partner Max Ernst’s arrest by the Nazis. The painting will be featured in the exhibition “Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal,” which has been extended through August 10, and will later travel to the arts center Faro Santander in September.
The exhibition matters because it reunites Carrington’s hospital-era works—including *Down Below* (1940)—for the first time, shedding light on a traumatic yet creatively fertile period in her life. The recovery of *Villa Pilar* not only adds a significant piece to Carrington’s oeuvre but also deepens understanding of how her psychiatric ordeal shaped her surrealist vision. The show’s extension and planned tour underscore growing institutional recognition of Carrington’s legacy and the importance of contextualizing mental health within art history.