Those interested in fashion, design, art, and cosmopolitan delights are often drawn to the city of Milan while they enjoy a vacation in Lombardy. Home to chic bars and boutiques, incredible museums, and amazing designers of all descriptions, it has plenty to offer those interested in beautiful and interesting objects and works of art.
The Palazzo Reale, the former seat of local government for centuries and a vast palatial structure, is today one of the city’s premier spaces for art, design, and culture. It is a cultural centre of the city and showcases international art and design exhibitions of modern and contemporary works in collaboration with some of the most famous and celebrated museums and institutions around the world.
Recently, it has hosted important and large-scale exhibitions of the works of Picasso, Munch, Dolce & Gabbana, Cézanne and Renoir, Goya, famous photographers, thematic group exhibitions, and more. Those who love the works of the surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington, meanwhile, will be able to see the first exhibition of her works in Italy at the Palazzo Reale if they book a holiday rental in Milan or a villa in Lombardy and plan a day-trip into Milan from September of this year into January of 2026. And if you’ve never even heard of her? Then, this is your chance to discover her trippy, colourful, fantastical, and beautiful works of art!
Aiming to explore Carrington as an artist and a complex and fascinating person, this exhibition will showcase, “her creative universe and powerful intellectual dimension through her visionary and multifaceted works.” In particular, this exhibition, as her first in Italy, will highlight the influence and importance of Italy in her life and work, detailing her education in Florence as a teenager and burgeoning artist. Furthermore, it will delve into major themes and inspirations in her life including her mother’s Irish background and the influence of Celtic mythology and themes on her work, her post-Victorian upbringing, and her early pull towards Surrealism, which she fell in love with upon seeing her first examples of it at the age of ten.
The exhibition is also divided and arranged by some of the main themes of her life and work such as her existence as a female artist, being a migrant and an exile, living as a mother, her feminist and ecological advocacy and activism, and her itchy feet – both physically, as a perpetual traveller, and through time and space in her intellectual and artistic pursuits.
Showcasing her evocative paintings alongside photographs, archival materials, and books taken from her personal library, this exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to familiarise yourself with, or to dig even deeper into, the life and work of this visionary and fascinating person and artist. Be sure to visit if you are booking a holiday rental in Lombardy this autumn!
Piazza del Duomo, 12 - Milan
+39 02 884 45 181 (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm)
c.mostre@comune.milano.it
Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7.30pm.
With opening hours extended to 10.30pm on Thursdays.
Last admission one hour before closing time.
Closed on Mondays
Tickets:
Open: €17
Full-price: €15
Reduced: from €13 to €10
Family (of 1 or 2 adults + children from 6 to 14 years old) combined ticket:
Adults for €10 each + Children for €6 each while those below 5 years old go.
An audio guide is included in the coast where available.
Presale excluded.