Encounters with Leonora Carrington’s work are often shaped by their setting, from expansive museum displays to more intimate curatorial spaces. Nowhere is this more evident than at London’s Freud Museum, where new exhibition The Symptomatic Surreal offers a markedly different lens on her life and art.
It’s the first exhibition of the British-Mexican surrealist’s work in the UK for 35 years. The show offers a markedly different experience from encountering her art in Mexico, where she lived from 1942 until her death in 2011.
In institutions such as the Museo de la Mujer (Woman’s Museum) in Mexico City, displays tend to emphasise the more outlandish aspects of her work and personality. Instead, The Symptomatic Surreal houses a selection of Carrington’s sketches made during her internment in Peña Castillo sanatorium in Santander, Spain, in the latter half of 1940.
