04/06/2026
Un Mundo. A World. Painted by an 18-year-old girl from the Spanish provinces in 1929.
Angeles Santos Torroella was born in Portbou, Catalonia, and moved to Valladolid at sixteen, where she took painting classes — far from Madrid, far from the cultural scene, far from everything. Two years later she painted this massive, dreamlike surrealist canvas and blew everyone's minds.
Un Mundo caused a sensation at the Autumn Salon in Madrid, and suddenly this unknown girl from the provinces was rubbing shoulders with Federico Garcia Lorca and Juan Ramon Jimenez.
Today the painting lives at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid — and she lived to see it hang there, dying in 2013 at the age of 101.
An incredibly gifted surrealist. A woman the art world forgot and rediscovered multiple times. Worth knowing.