Auction record Leonora Carrington with the wooden sculpture painted by her ‘La Grande Dame’. Also known as: ‘The Cat Woman’. A buyer paid no less than 11.38 million dollars (!) for it at auction house Sotheby’s. This amount breaks the record of another wooden sculpture: ‘Thérèse’ by Paul Gauguin. This Gauguin went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in 2021 for 9.5 million dollars.
Auction record Leonora Carrington with the wooden sculpture painted by her ‘La Grande Dame’.
The British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) did not carve the wooden sculpture herself. She had the husband of a befriended photographer in Mexico do it, the woodworker José Horna. She did paint the sculpture with her surrealist scenes, which seem to have walked straight out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch (1450 – 1516). ‘La Grande Dame’ towers impressively high, taller than a person.
Carrington and Horna did not make many wooden sculptures together: ‘La Grande Dame‘ is recorded as the most complex and unfortunately also one of the few co-creations in wood that has been preserved.
The England-born Carrington molded more sculptures from plasticine, which were enlarged and also cast in bronze. Even when she was at an age where health problems made it impossible for her to contribute to the finishing of all those bronzes herself.
Her wooden sculpture from 1951 is fully titled ‘La Grande Dame: (The Cat Woman)’. After a tour of museums it was up for auction this year (2024) for the first time in almost 30 years. Sotheby’s estimated the proceeds in advance at an amount between 5 million and 7 million dollars. It turned out to be much more. A record even, the highest amount ever paid for a work of art in wood: 11,380,000 US dollars! That is equivalent to 10.19 million euros.
The winning buyer was Eduardo Costantini, an Argentine real estate developer and top collector of Latin American art. Costantini is the founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA). That is where this ‘Carrington’ will – probably – be on display from now on.
Carrington made the sculpture almost ten years after her move to Mexico in 1943, fleeing World War II in France. There she belonged to the first generation of surrealist artists, like Man Ray and Giacometti. In Mexico too, the British woman, who became a naturalized Mexican, connected with a group of artists (including Frida Kahlo) who fed surrealism with a fascination for spiritualism and the occult. Carrington mixed numerous mythological figures into her work.
All those characteristics can be found on the mysterious wooden sculpture with such elongated fingers that they are reminiscent of the Art Deco sculptures from Bali. The smoothly sanded but still rough cat-like head has the shape of a wide shovel. Others also see a butterfly in it, with two dark spots on the ‘wings’. The face has an expression that borders between surprise and fright. Or is she crying?
Between surprise and fright
The demand for Carrington’s work on the art market has been rising in recent years at a speed that is even more surreal than surrealism itself. In May 2024 her painting ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945)’ was sold at Sotheby’s for 28.5 million dollars – to the same buyer as ‘The Cat Woman’, Eduardo Costantini. For comparison: in 1995 the same painting was sold for ‘only’ 475,500 dollars.
The cycles of life
Carrington painted the body with scenes about femininity and the cycles of life. It is also this theme that makes her paintings so popular today. There is a strong catch-up movement now that Western museums are supplementing their collections and exhibitions with works by undervalued female artists who have long been overlooked.
On the chest of the wooden sculpture Carrington painted a blue-green unicorn looking at a scene in which a glistening egg is passed from one woman to another.
The egg, a common Carrington symbol of female power, returns on the back of the sculpture, floating between a woman clad in a dandelion and a wolf-like goddess. Sotheby’s presented before the sale on YouTube an exemplary presentation in which the symbolism of all these figures is discussed.
Text Jan Bom, November 19, 2024
