Leonora Carrington’s painting breaks auction record.
The British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington “entered the pantheon” of the most sought-after women artists, with the auction of her painting “The Distractions of Dagoberto” for $28.4 million at the spring auctions being held this week in New York .
The work, a record for the surrealist painter at an auction, was acquired on Wednesday night by the founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba), Eduardo F. Costantini, who described it as “an iconic painting.”
The work will be part of a collection that also includes, among others, two important works by Mexicans Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo.
This collector owns Frida’s painting “Diego and I”, for which he paid 34.8 million US dollars in November 2021, taking the Latin American painting at levels never seen before.
After an exciting 10-minute battle in which six people bid, two of them in the room, the audience burst into applause when auctioneer Oliver Barker’s hammer sounded announcing the award of the Carrington painting, which the house had estimated at between 12 and 18 million dollars. Her previous record was $3.3 million at another Sotheby’s auction in 2022.
#AuctionUpdate: At public auction for the first time in three decades, Leonora Carrington’s defining masterpiece ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert’ soars to a new record for the artist, fetching $28.5M. #SothebysModern pic.twitter.com/W4e6cAwnaR
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) May 16, 2024
“The Distractions of Dagobert” (Las Distracciones de Dagoberto), which evokes the particular universe of Jerome Bosco, is “a pioneer in the visionary style that today we associate with surrealism”, says Sotheby’s, which specifies that like Carrington herself, “it defies any categorization, existing on an astral plane of its unique being.”
The price paid for the work of Carrington (1917-2011) places her among the five most sought-after artists, along with the aforementioned Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, and Joan Mitchell.
Likewise, she is now among the four most valuable surrealist artists at auction, surpassing Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí, according to Sotheby’s.
Source: OEM
