In the fall of 2026, a painting hangs on a wall in Santander that no one outside a Spanish medical family had seen for more than eighty years. It is called Villa Pilar, was painted in 1940 by Leonora Carrington, and is now on public view for the first time. Here you’ll find the story behind the image, an explanation of why her hybrid creatures feel so modern, and practical tips for how a surrealist poster in her spirit can work on the wall at home.
Quick facts: Faro Santander, a new art center on Paseo de Pereda in Santander, opened on September 8, 2026. The exhibition Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal is the first devoted exclusively to what Carrington created during her confinement in the city in 1940, and runs until January 2027. It was produced in collaboration with the Freud Museum in London. Villa Pilar and Down Below, both painted in 1940, are on display there together for the first time.
Villa Pilar: the painting hidden since 1940
The story of Villa Pilar begins with a gift. When Carrington left the sanatorium in Santander at the turn of 1940–1941, she gave an oil painting to her doctor, Dr. Luis Morales. The painting remained in the Morales family’s possession and had never before been exhibited or published. It was only when the team behind Faro Santander researched the opening that the work came to light, and it now hangs in the exhibition beside its companion piece, Down Below.
The subject is a small theater of creatures. Four animal figures stand against a greenish background with a volcanic landscape: a free horse, a rebellious hyena, a peacock, and a white guard dog. They are neither cute nor frightening, but somewhere in between, and that tension is precisely what makes the image so magnetic. Carrington paints them with the same seriousness a Renaissance painter would have brought to a portrait.
If you want to read the original sources, you can start with the news coverage of the discovery on Arte al Día, which describes the find and the sanatorium’s history, and Santander’s own press release about Faro Santander’s opening.
Santander 1940: the sanatorium where she was allowed to draw to put her thoughts in order
The background is dramatic. Carrington, born in Lancashire in 1917, had been living with Max Ernst in the south of France when World War II broke out. Ernst was interned as a German citizen, she fled to Spain, and there she suffered a breakdown. She was taken to Dr. Luis Morales’s sanatorium in Santander, where she stayed from August 24, 1940, to January 1, 1941.
What was, at the time, a devastating treatment became an artistic turning point in retrospect. The doctors encouraged her to draw in order, in their words, to organize her thoughts and explain herself. She filled sketchbooks with pencil drawings and painted two oil paintings: Villa Pilar and Down Below. The latter depicts the sanatorium’s garden, where the patients have been transformed into human-animal hybrids. In 1941, in Madrid, she gave it to the Mexican diplomat Renato Leduc, who helped her continue on to New York.
She wrote the story down herself in 1944 in the book Down Below, titled Memorias de abajo in Spanish. It is an unusually honest account of a mental health crisis, written by someone who refused to let others interpret her experience for her. That perspective lies at the heart of the entire exhibition, and it is also why her images still feel relevant at a time when we talk openly about mental health.
"Carrington drew her way out of the crisis, and the images remained after the sanatorium had been forgotten."
The Horse, the Hyena and the Peacock: Carrington’s Animal Imagery
Animals are the common thread throughout Carrington’s life. She grew up in a wealthy family in the English countryside, close to horses and dogs, and the horse recurs in her art as a symbol of freedom and instinct. In Villa Pilar, it is the horse that is described as free, while the hyena is described as rebellious. These are not random choices. Carrington used animals as an alternative language, a way to speak about things that were forbidden in the environment she grew up in.
The Surrealist movement often viewed women through a male gaze, as muses. Carrington turned that around. In her work, women are the ones who act, cast spells and transform themselves, not the ones being observed. This gives her images a timeless quality that is easily lost when art history tells only the stories of Dalí and Ernst. If you’d like to learn more about other female Surrealists, we recommend our guide to Remedios Varo at Louisiana, who shared both a friendship and an artistic vision with Carrington in Mexico.
Why do hybrid creatures work so well as wall art?
A hybrid creature is an image you never finish with. The brain keeps trying to place the creature: is it human, is it an animal, what does it want? This unfinished reading keeps the subject interesting long after a more straightforward image would have become invisible in everyday life. It’s the same mechanism that makes us look longer at a face that’s slightly off than at one that’s perfectly correct.
From Lancashire to Mexico City: an artist who never fit in
After fleeing via Madrid and New York, Carrington settled in Mexico City in 1942, where she remained until her death in 2011. She made herself at home in a circle of European émigré artists, and it was here that her best-known paintings took shape: kitchen scenes with witches, tables set for ghosts, and landscapes where alchemy and everyday life mingle.
Mexico is also the link to another major autumn exhibition, Frida: The Making of an Icon at Tate Modern, which runs until January 3, 2027. Read our guide to Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern if you want to see how the two artists’ visual worlds met and differed. Both used their own bodies and personal stories as raw material, and both rejected the notion that women’s art should be decorative.
For those who want to understand the broader context, we also have our overview of surrealism at Moderna Museet, where you can see how dream art took shape in Sweden.
The unsettling beauty: why we linger in front of Carrington’s images
There’s a particular kind of image that both attracts and frightens, and Carrington was one of its greatest masters. Her creatures often wear a smile that’s hard to interpret. Is it friendly, threatening, or simply amused? The viewer is left without an answer, and that’s a luxury in everyday life, where most images want to sell you something or explain themselves right away.
Art psychology sometimes talks about how incomplete information holds our gaze. A subject that can be read in two seconds quickly becomes invisible on a wall. A subject that demands interpretation continues to give something back. That’s why surrealist images are often appreciated by those who stay in the same home for a long time and want a picture that grows with the years rather than one they tire of.
At the same time, it’s wise to choose deliberately. An image that is distinctly unsettling rarely belongs in the room where you sleep poorly, while the same image can work wonders in a home office or hallway. Ask yourself whether you want the image to be a companion or a challenge. Both are perfectly valid choices, but they call for different placements.
Carrington on the wall: rooms, formats, and colors
Bozetto’s selection does not include works by Carrington herself, but several of our collections feature motifs that share her visual world. Explore artworks by famous artists for classic modernism, cats and animal posters for characterful animal motifs, and illustration posters for images that tell a story. If you prefer color dreams without figures, you’ll find something among our abstract posters.
The bedroom and reading nook
Surrealist motifs suit rooms where you want to let your thoughts wander. Above the bed or by a reading chair, a single 50x70 poster is enough to give the room a conversation piece that never gets old. Keep the frame simple, preferably in black or oak, so the image can speak for itself. Place the center of the poster about 145 centimeters above the floor, at eye level for someone standing.
The hallway and staircase
You pass through a hallway in passing, so a strong, clear silhouette works best there. Choose a size such as 30x40 or 40x50 and hang two images side by side if the wall allows. A hybrid creature greeting guests at the front door says something right away about who lives here.
Tip: Surrealist motifs come to life against a muted background. Choose a wall in light gray-green, earthy brown, or warm white, and avoid wallpaper with its own pattern behind the image. Measure the space before you buy, and leave at least 15 centimeters of clear wall on each side of the poster so the image has room to breathe.
The home office and kitchen table
A home office can certainly handle an image that challenges the mind. Hung beside the desk, to the side of the screen rather than directly in front of it, a surrealist poster makes a little resting place for the eyes between tasks. In a kitchen or by a dining table, a humorous animal image can bring people together, as guests will enjoy pointing and suggesting what the creatures are thinking about.
The colors: green, ochre, and volcanic red
Villa Pilar’s palette features green with volcanic accents, and it works well in Swedish homes. Gray-green complements natural materials such as wood, linen, and wool, while a small reddish-orange detail works as an accent. Try pairing it with medium-brown wood and a warm white lampshade, so the colors in the image are echoed in the room without copying the painting.
Also consider the lighting. Dark, saturated images with lots of green or black need good lighting to make the details visible, especially during the short days of fall and winter. A small wall lamp with a warm color temperature of about 2700 kelvin will make the figures stand out without the image becoming glossy from reflections. Avoid hanging it opposite a window with direct sunlight, as this could cause problems with both the colors and the glass.
Frames and mats for figurative Surrealism
Figurative images with fine details work well with a mat, as it gives the eye a little distance from the subject. Allow for the mat to be about one tenth of the image’s shorter side in width. For a 30x40 poster, that’s about three centimeters. Choose a wooden or narrow metal frame, and consider asking for UV-protective glass or acrylic if the poster will hang in a bright room. Always measure the image’s outer dimensions before choosing a frame.
Frequently asked questions about Leonora Carrington and surrealist posters
Looking for a poster that makes guests stop and ask what they’re looking at? Explore all our posters and choose an image that tells you more every time you look at it.