In institutions such as the Museo de la Mujer (Woman\u2019s Museum) in Mexico City, displays tend to emphasise the more outlandish aspects of her work and personality. Instead, The Symptomatic Surreal<\/a> houses a selection of Carrington\u2019s sketches made during her internment in Pe\u00f1a Castillo sanatorium in Santander, Spain, in the latter half of 1940. <\/p>\n The exhibition is understated, located in a room far smaller and less open than where I\u2019d engaged with her work previously. I noted no natural light can enter. It\u2019s a perfect fit for the story of Carrington\u2019s confinement and the creativity which ensued.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important that the museum was once home to Sigmund Freud and his family. As the exhibition unfolds, psychoanalysis comes increasingly to the fore, deepening visitors\u2019 understanding of Carrington\u2019s life, her art and her evolving interpretations of the unconscious.<\/p>\n Read more: A life less ordinary<\/p>\n Born in Chorley, north-west England, in 1917 into a family enriched by the textile industry, Carrington felt constrained by expectations that she perform the role of a debutante, despite her growing interest in art and surrealism. Leaving the UK for Paris, she pursued both her artistic ambitions and her relationship with the established \u2013 and married \u2013 German surrealist Max Ernst. The couple later settled in Provence in the south of the country, from where Ernst periodically returned to Paris to visit his wife, to whom he remained married.<\/p>\n Down Below by Carrington (1940) on display in the exhibition. The relationship was ultimately derailed in 1940 by Ernst\u2019s second arrest for being an enemy alien in the country, and ensuing detainment in the Camp des Milles, not far from where he lived with Carrington. In despair after her separation from Ernst and enforced flight from their once shared Proven\u00e7al home due to encroaching Nazi forces, Carrington crossed the border to Spain via Andorra. During the journey, her grasp on reality became fitful, resulting in a complete breakdown after she arrived in Madrid.<\/p>\n The Symptomatic Surreal presents the aftermath of this break, focusing on Carrington\u2019s sketches at the sanatorium where she was kept for approximately six months. She compared her time there to \u201cbeing dead\u201d<\/a>, telling friend Marina Warner: \u201cI\u2019d suffered so much when Max was taken away to the camp, I entered a catatonic state, and I was no longer suffering in an ordinary human dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n Curator Vanessa Boni captures this suffering and foregrounds a period of Carrington\u2019s life which was distinctly unsafe. It was a time during which, visitors learn, the artist was treated three times with Cardiazol<\/a>, a \u201ctreatment\u201d that induced seizures in sanatorium patients to render them compliant.<\/p>\n Read more: Boni has taken Carrington\u2019s own description of the sanatorium as \u201clike death\u201d to heart, making connections to death throughout the exhibition. Areas of the work foreshadow the beliefs around death Carrington would later be exposed to in Mexico. Boni\u2019s choice to draw together statuettes and figures of Egyptian deities Anubis, Isis, Horus and Osiris from Freud\u2019s own collection<\/a> speaks to a shared interest in death as a stage of transformation.<\/p>\n Carrington in her studio. Gently and with careful attention to language, the exhibition traces Carrington\u2019s undoing and reconstitution, or \u201crebirth\u201d, as Boni described it in conversation with me. This narrative unfolds through personal letters Carrington sent to her father during her internment, alongside important passages from her written work, Down Below (1944). It is further developed through the artwork of the same name, as well as sketches produced during her time in the sanatorium.<\/p>\n We learn that both Freud and Carrington held a preoccupation with what the artist termed the \u201cdown below\u201d, or underworld. It is hard not to see Mexico, the home of the underworld of Mictl\u00e1n<\/a>, a place of transformation reached after death, suggested as a fated eventual home for the artist. In Mexican belief systems, death is not feared but a constant presence for the living. This is echoed in a quotation from Carrington chosen to welcome visitors to The Symptomatic Surreal: \u201cI didn\u2019t know where I was going. This seems to be a recurring thing in my life. I think it\u2019s death practice.\u201d<\/p>\n Having progressed through Carrington\u2019s experiences and reactions to her treatment at the sanatorium, we are led to the painting of Down Below<\/a> (1940), a piece which is certainly uneasy to take in. Lounging, disjointed figures stare vacantly, or indeed without eyes, in front of a circus tent, hinting at the frenzy which may occur behind its curtains. Glints of vibrancy \u2013 bright red stockings, mustard yellow tights, a goose feather white body and the Kelly green of Carrington\u2019s horse alter-ego (also present in many of her sketches on display) \u2013 are at odds with the heavy experiences which led to the work\u2019s creation, and which bleed into the darkening skies above.<\/p>\n The Symptomatic Surreal is a potent gift for any fan of Leonora Carrington, and certainly for those who seek to understand any of her later works, whether on the canvas, drawn, sculpted or written. The Freud Museum is an excellent home for the exhibition. The show highlights the way we process the unconscious, death and our relationships with mental health through careful curatorial choices.<\/p>\n The Symptomatic Surreal<\/a> is at London\u2019s Freud Museum until June 28 2026<\/p>\n
\n Freud Museum exhibition uses art to explore the psychoanalyst\u2019s often contradictory relationships with women<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260326-83-ijoz5x.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Courtesy of Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco<\/p>\n
\n New book sheds light on surrealist artist Leonora Carrington\u2019s extraordinary life and work<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Leonora](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/file-20260327-57-6l0339.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Kati and Jos\u00e9 Horna Private Archive of Photography and Graphic Arts<\/a><\/p>\n