Leonora Carrington / Palazzo Reale

The Dream as a Portal to the Real

At Palazzo Reale in Milan, a major retrospective brings Leonora Carrington’s imagination into focus through more than sixty works that trace her journey from England to Mexico, from surrealist rebellion to spiritual transcendence. Curated through thematic chapters, each weaving together her life and artistic metamorphoses, the exhibition illuminates how Carrington transformed the dream into an instrument of knowledge, and art into a laboratory of female liberation.

The first-ever Italian retrospective dedicated to Leonora Carrington, which bears her own name, opens at Palazzo Reale in Milan from the 19th of October until 11th January 2026 offering visitors a rare opportunity to enter her visionary world. Through paintings, drawings, photographs, and archival materials, the exhibition reconstructs not only the artist’s biography and chronology but also her imagination, articulated in thematic sections that weave together life and work, dream and reality. This retrospective fits within Palazzo Reale’s broader curatorial vision, which in recent years has sought to spotlight women artists associated with Surrealism. It follows the exhibition dedicated to Leonor Fini: two women, both fiercely independent and revolutionary, united by a defiant spirit and a vision that merges the oneiric with the political, the magical with the psychological.

Carrington was a painter, sculptor, writer, and playwright, a multifaceted figure who traversed the 20th century blending feminism and ecology, myth and psychology, dream and matter. Her name resurfaced on the global stage after Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, which borrowed its title directly from one of Carrington’s most poetic books. There is a profound reason why this retrospective takes place in Italy: the country served as a formative point of departure for Carrington’s artistic development. Her years in Florence proved decisive: the spatial composition and luminous perspective of the Italian and Flemish Renaissance left an enduring mark on her visual language. Appropriately, the exhibition opens with a direct nod to this connection in the section titled “Grand Tour,”recounting Carrington’s journey from England through France and Switzerland, ending in Italy: a rebellious, self-defining chapter pursued in defiance of her father’s will.

Leonora Carrington, Sisters of the Moon, Fantasia, 1933. Watercolor, graphite on paper and ink, 25 x 18 cm. Private Collection PH: courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025

A pivotal moment in her oeuvre, presented here, is the watercolor series Sisters of the Moon (a title that echoes the Fleetwood Mac song) where Carrington envisions nymphs, fairies, and witches as embodiments of feminine power and secret knowledge. These works form an alternative cosmogony, a universe of mystical sisterhood. The second section, The Bride of the Wind, borrows its name from a story written by Max Ernst, one of Carrington’s most turbulent loves. With Ernst, she settled in the south of France, in Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, transforming their home into a total work of art. These were years of great creative fertility, during which Carrington entered the inner circle of Surrealism, later extending her reach to New York’s avant-garde. Among the pieces in this section are early references to horses, a lifelong symbol for Carrington and an avatar of Ernst himself. The exhibition places their works in dialogue, including a rare preparatory sketch for Ernst’s Antichrist, today housed at the Guggenheim in Venice, a painting that allegorises his tormented love for Carrington and his anguish toward Peggy Guggenheim, cast here as the “other woman.”

Between the second and third sections, a documentary video featuring Carrington’s own voice offers an intimate transition to the next chapter, Displacement. This part explores her move to Mexico, where she would spend the rest of her life, raise a family, and shape her mature artistic identity. It was a period of transition and fusion: in her imagery, the Celtic myths of her Irish mother and governess resurfaced alongside the tales of Lewis Carroll, Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, James Stephens, and Jonathan Swift. These early influences merged with the Renaissance and Flemish pictorial tradition, producing a visual language both uncanny and hybrid, saturated with shadowy hues and acid tones.

Leonora Carrington, Prophets & the New Myths, ca. 1938. Ink on paper, 22.4 x 32.7 cm. Parigi, Collection Anne Wachsmann Guigon © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, The Eléments, 1946. Oil on canvas, 35.6 × 99.8 cm. Rudman Trust Collection © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, Orplied, 1955. Oil on canvas, 90 x 131 cm. COLECCIÓN BANCO NACIONAL DE MÉXICO © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025

The fourth section returns to the idea of travel as transformation, following the narrative structure described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey. Here, the exhibition focuses on The Heroine’s Journey, conceived as a path of inner exploration and visionary mapping, where Carrington confronted her own demons. The space is filled with white veils and spectral horse shadows, evoking the lingering presence of Ernst as both ghost and muse. This section reveals Carrington’s most spiritual dimension, as she embraced ancient mystical traditions such as Zoroastrianism alongside esoteric currents flourishing in early 20th-century Mexico: spiritism, Freemasonry, Gnosticism, the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky, and the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, whose ideas she followed devotedly.

The fifth section delves into Carrington’s lifelong pursuit of transformative and alternative knowledge. Among the highlights are the tarot cards she designed, reflecting her engagement with esoteric philosophies, from Aleister Crowley to more hermetic schools of thought. In the final section, Carrington gathers all the esoteric doctrines and arcane symbolism explored throughout her life and condenses them into a single space: the kitchen. Traditionally associated with domestic labour, here the kitchen becomes a site of alchemical transformation, a place where women reclaim the powers long denied to them: alchemy, magic, witchcraft. Carrington’s fascination with the kitchen as a mystical workshop began during her years with Ernst in southern France but reached full expression in Mexico. There she experimented with new ingredients and rituals inspired by Sonora’s witches’ markets, transforming food preparation into a form of spell-casting. This becomes an act of female re-empowerment, a reclamation of creative and spiritual agency.

Leonora Carrington, A Map of the Human Animal, 1962. Watercolor, graphite and ink on paper, 43.6 x 36.5 cm. Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman. PH : Jeff MC Lane © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Remedios Varo, Paisaje, torre, centauro 1943. Mixed technique on paper, 35x25cm. Collection Peréz Simón © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, La joie de patinage, 1941. Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 60.9 cm. Madrid, Collection Peréz Simón © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, Sous la rose des vents (Under the Compass Rose), 1955. Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 33.7 cm. Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., 2022.22.McD © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, Levitasium, 1950. Oil on canvas, 55.2 x 30.1 cm. Frahm Collection pc : Christie’s © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025
Leonora Carrington, Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen, 1974. Oil on canvas, 79 x 124 cm. The Charles B. Goddard Center for Visual and Performing Arts – Ardmore, Oklahoma © Estate of Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2025

Carrington’s presence in today’s cultural landscape feels particularly resonant. In Milan, her retrospective coincides with another major exhibition, Fata Morgana, also devoted to esotericism. Together, these shows illuminate two key threads in contemporary consciousness: the woman as witch, and the resurgence of mystical and ecological thinking as responses to a fractured world. In a time marked by war, environmental crisis, and the omnipresence of artificial intelligence, the return to magical thought functions as both a form of escape and an act of resistance. Carrington’s eco-feminist vision lies at the heart of her practice: a foundation for later movements of female independence, yet, by her own insistence, meant to speak to all genders. She anticipated a notion of the hybrid subject, fluid and undefined, a sentient being aware of its continuity with the animal and natural world. Throughout her work, this philosophy manifests as an invitation to question, transform, and seek self-knowledge through the pursuit of alternative realities. Through this exhibition, Palazzo Reale restores to Italy the full complexity of one of the most celebrated figures of the twentieth century, an artist who wove together myth and matter, the feminine and the cosmic, vision and rebellion. 

Leonora Carrington / Palazzo Reale

Credits

Venue: Palazzo Reale / @palazzorealemilano
Words: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Editor: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko
Junior Editor: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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