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.