A rare ‘alien’ sculpture by surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is heading to auction

As surrealism celebrates its 100th anniversary, a rare sculpture by the famous surrealist Leonora Carrington goes up for auction.

Sotheby’s will be sold on November 18 La Grande Dame (The cat lady)that the British-Mexican artist created in 1951. The piece is expected to sell for between $5 million and $7 million.

The “otherworldly” sculpture is made of sculpted and polychrome wood, which Carrington painted with images of “hybrid creatures and lush dreamscapes” that evoke “an enduring sense of awe,” Sotheby’s said. With a length of over two meters, La Grande Dame is a “poised, enigmatic figure with elongated facial features and an indecipherable expression spread across his spade-shaped head,” as Artnet‘ writes Richard Whiddington.

Experts have raised concerns about the authenticity of some of the sculptures attributed to Carrington Art newspaperby Hannah McGivern. However, La Grande Dame is not one of them. Sotheby’s says Harold Gabriel Weisz Carrington, the artist’s eldest son and chairman of the Fundación Leonora Carringtonhas confirmed the authenticity of the work.

Both museums and private collectors are expected to bid for the statue. It is being sold by a “distinguished American private collection,” according to Sotheby’s. The piece was previously owned by Edward James, a British patron of the Surrealist movement. This is the first time in three decades that it has been offered at public auction.

“This is her largest sculpture,” says Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of Impressionist and Modern Art for the Americas. ART newsKaren K. Ho.

Dawes adds that her work is “very relevant around the world.” Carrington was “a British artist who worked in Mexico and used Egyptian, Celtic and pre-Columbian iconography, creating something that was completely fantastic and original,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of institutional activity.”

Another Carrington piece called a 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobertsold for one file $28.5 million earlier this year. Experts say demand for Carrington’s work has soared as the art world has shifted its focus to the often overlooked women of the Surrealist movement.

Born into a wealthy family in England in 1917, Carrington was a rebellious child banished from at least two monastery schools. When she was 14, her parents sent her to an Italian boarding school, where she took up painting.

She later moved to London and then to Paris, and began participating in the Surrealist movement in the late 1930s. Carrington moved to Mexico in 1942, became a naturalized Mexican citizen, and spent the rest of her life in the country. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 94.

Carrington was primarily a painter, but she was also a writer and sculptor. Her work often featured goddesses, animals, human-animal hybrids, mythological creatures and otherworldly scenes. But like the work of other Surrealists, Carrington’s art is difficult to characterize – and she liked that too.

“All her life she refused to explain her work… and she resented any attempt to impose the order of language on her images,” wrote Artistic‘s Siobhan Leddy in 2019. “By looking beyond the visible world, beyond the rational or understandable, Carrington leaves us alone with abstract terms like ‘magic’.”