The Night of Return
What happens at night, when no one can see (or hear) the artworks...?
ENTER the museum
The museum sleeps. Paintings shimmer faintly under the low lights, and the guards have gone home hours ago. Only the hum of the air vents, the creak of wood, the whisper of history remains. Three figures keep watch: a woman of wood and paint, a dream caught in color, and a golden icon that never fully closes her eyes. They’ve stood like this for years… side by side… silent.
But tonight... something shifts. The air changes. A spark runs through the floor, across the frames, into the carved feet of the tall wooden lady. Her painted chest glows, just faintly, like a heartbeat remembered. And then… she speaks.
The Cat Lady: And it’s night… again. We do it every night, every day of the year. Just standing. No words spoken, no movement made. Still as stone....well, wood, in my case.
The Cat Lady: Do you ever wonder how you were made? What happened after- when you were sent away, sold, borrowed, hidden? We gain consciousness the moment our creators finish us… but our story doesn’t stop there.
Dagobert: You’re dramatic, as always, Dame. But… I get it. We stare, we wait. We let people project their stories onto us. No one ever asks ours.
Dagobert: I tried not to think about it. Too many hands, too many rooms. Better to stay still.
Icon: Maybe they think we don’t remember. But I remember everything. The smell of oil paint. The hum of a radio in a Mexico City studio. The hands that touched me before gloves ever did.
The Icon: And yet… don’t you feel it tonight? Something’s different. Like the air’s humming.
Museum Spirit: You feel correctly. Tonight is no ordinary night. It’s the Night of Return, the one moment every century when artworks may ask the world for answers. Your questions have been heard.
Museum Spirit (smiling): Ah, my wooden friend… that is for you to discover. Each of you holds fragments of your own journey- through hands, across oceans, through time. Follow the trail of those who touched you, traded you, or dreamed you into being. Only then will you know what you’ve become.
The Cat Lady (awed): Then tell us. Who are we? Where did we come from?
Museum Spirit: One path for each of you. Three journeys, three truths. Choose wisely.
The Cat Lady (to the others):Well then. I suppose it’s finally our turn to move.
Las distracciones de Dagoberto
Ícono
La Grande Dame
Map of their journeys
Edward James’s Room
Sotheby’s Auction House
MALBA
Edward James: The Patron and the Protector
The Mexico Years: Collaboration and Craft
Safe, or Trapped?
A Feminine Surrealism Hidden from the Canon
Edward James:Ah. You’ve woken, my dear creature. I remember the day Leonora and José made you. The smell of wood shavings in the Mexico heat. I bought you not for what you were, but for what you contained. Something alive. Something defiant. You were too strange for the London galleries, too feminine for the Surrealist boys. But I kept you safe, didn’t I? Hidden in my collection, among all the other orphans of genius.
The Economics of Preservation
Edward James’s Room
Provenance and Packaging
The Night of the Sale
The Market Shift: From Marginal to Mainstream
From Hammer to Haven
Art as Asset
The Cat Lady: “The air here smells like perfume and numbers. I stand beneath white lights, watched by strangers who call me Lot 47. Their eyes shimmer with desire, not devotion.
I once lived in silence in a collector’s hall. Now every breath I take costs a million more. Eleven point three, that’s what they say I’m worth.
They applaud when the hammer falls, as if I’ve been freed. But tell me, is it freedom if you’re just changing cages?”
Sotheby’s Auction House, New York
Restoration and Display
The Feminist Reclamation
MALBA’s Vision: Building a Latin American Canon
A Living Legacy
The Cat Lady: “And now I stand again under lights… but these are different. Softer. They don’t glare; they listen. Children point at me and whisper ‘la gata gigante.’ Students take notes, their pens trembling a little. I am not for sale here. I am home, not the one I was made in, not the one I was kept in, but the one where people finally see me.” Funny, isn’t it? To travel half the world just to be recognized by strangers.
From Exile to Belonging
MALBA, Buenos Aires
Mexico City, 1945
Sotheby’s Auction House
MALBA
The Mexican Exile Network
Technique & Materials
The Iconography of Alchemy & Myth
Gender & Surrealism
Carrington: This chaos of midnight brushes and lantern-light...I remember when I painted you. Mexico City, 28 years old, Europe’s war still echoing inside. I poured myth and wood-smoke into your veins. Do you remember that first sigh you took?
Mexico City, 1945
Distribution & Global Visibility
Auction Record & Market Leap
Social Value vs. Market Value
Provenance Journey
Auctioner: White walls, hushed paddles, the clink of champagne and ambition...here you stood for sale. They whispered you were ‘Lot 20.’ You rose faster than I expected. Twenty-eight million dollars. Value soared. But did they see you, or just the price?
Sotheby’s Auction Room, New York, May 2024
MALBA & Latin American Modernism
Conservation & Public Access
Technology & the Viewer’s Experience
Curatorial & Feminist Reframing
MALBA Conservator:From palette to pedestal, now you stand among few, but seen by many. MALBA’s lights soften your wings. Here the city hums outside; you breathe inside. Did you travel for visibility? Because now you’re luminous.
Sotheby’s Auction Room, New York, May 2024
Mexico City, 1945
Between Owners, 1945–2000s
MALBA
The Altarpiece Structure
Exile & Community
The Iconography of Alchemy & Myth
Technique & Materials
Alchemy & Science
Remedio:You were born between the scent of varnish and cigarette smoke. I hummed to myself while painting your sky. I called you my ‘altar for exile.’ You were gold, pearl, and dream, something sacred, but not for any god. You were for women who’d lost their homes and built new ones out of imagination.
Mexico City, 1945
Private Collections & Silence
Transport & Preservation
Rediscovery & Museum Interest
Icona:They closed my doors for decades. I lived in darkness, the smell of cedar and old dust. No one knew the glow I carried inside. People whispered about me- ‘a lost Varo,’ they said, but I just waited, patient as gold leaf, for someone to open me again.
Between Owners, 1945–2000s
MALBA’s Feminist Curating
Digital Access & New Audiences
Cultural Recontextualization
Legacy & Voice
Icono:They’ve opened my doors again. I can finally breathe. People stop, tilt their heads, and I hear them whisper about me. I’ve crossed oceans, wars, collectors, and crates just to stand here, in a room where my light belongs.
MALBA, Buenos Aires
La Grande Dame
Dagoberto
Icono
The work is oil on gilded wood with mother-of-pearl inlay (60 × 73.2 × 5.5 cm). Varo’s use of shimmering surfaces and intricate joinery recalls both Spanish craft traditions and sacred objects, translating them into the dreamlike logic of Surrealism.Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/.
After the sale, the sculpture was crated again for transport to Argentina. MALBA announced its arrival on social media with the caption: “¡La Grande Dame ya está en sala!” The journey closed a circle between Carrington’s life in Mexico and her new residence in Latin America’s most important modern art museum, a transfer of both geography and symbolic power. (Sources: MALBA Facebook Post, Nov 2024; La Nación 2024.)
Executed in 1945 when Carrington was 28, the work is tempera on masonite (75.6 × 87 cm) and remains one of her most detailed paintings. (Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction/les-distractions-de-dagobert
)
The painting’s gilded wood and mother-of-pearl make it especially fragile. Before entering MALBA, it underwent transport in climate-controlled containers and ultraviolet analysis to stabilize the surface, an example of modern technological care.Source: Smithsonian Institution, ‘Care of Painted Wood Objects.’ https://www.si.edu/mci/downloads/RELACT/paintedwood.pdf
After fleeing Europe during WWII, Leonora Carrington settled in Mexico in 1942. Surrounded by exiled Surrealists and local intellectuals, she developed her own style that fused Celtic myth, Mexican folklore, and alchemy. The Distractions of Dagobert (1945) was one of her first large-scale works painted in Mexico City’s Roma district.(Sources: Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (1985); Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (2004).)
From the 1990s onward, scholars and museums began re-examining Varo’s role in Surrealism. Ícono was gradually recognized as a key piece bridging European and Latin American modernism. Source: Art Al Día, “Remedios Varo en el MALBA.” https://es.artealdia.com/Noticias/Remedios-Varo-en-el-MALBA
In the new gallery, La Grande Dame stands close to Carrington’s The Distractions of Dagobert. Visitors often see the two as companions: one vertical, monumental, protective; the other fluid and dreamlike. Together, they narrate Carrington’s entire spectrum- from rebellion to transcendence. (Sources: MALBA Gallery Notes 2025; Robinson 2023 on mythic feminine imagery.)
🧡 Leonora Carrington - Las Distracciones de Dagoberto (1945) Color: Orange Line 1️⃣ Mexico City → New York (1945–1948) - Painted in postwar Mexico, exhibited through the Pierre Matisse Gallery. 2️⃣ New York → Private Collection (U.S.) (1950s–2020) - Sold to a private collector; unseen for decades. 3️⃣ New York → Buenos Aires (2024) - Auctioned at Sotheby’s for $28.4M, acquired by Costantini for MALBA.
On 15 May 2024, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale in New York presented La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) as Lot 47. The auctioneer opened bidding at $6 million; within five minutes the price climbed to $11.3 million with fees, a record for a Carrington sculpture. Eduardo Costantini, founder of MALBA in Buenos Aires, won after a brief duel with another anonymous collector. (Sources: Sotheby’s catalog May 2024; Ezquiaga 2024, The Art Newspaper; Artnet News, 15 May 2024.)
Carrington spent most of her life in Mexico, far from her birthplace in England. Lora Markova describes her identity as “a mosaic of exile and belonging.” The sculpture’s arrival in Buenos Aires mirrors Carrington’s own hybrid legacy- a British-born artist who became a symbol of Latin American surrealism. Her “afterlife” at MALBA embodies this cross-cultural belonging.(Sources: Markova, “Leonora Carrington’s Imaginary Homelands,” 2020.)
The painting hangs in a section alongside works by Varo and Kahlo, reframing surrealist history with the feminine and the transnational at its core. (Source: El Litoral, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?)
💜 Leonora Carrington- La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman, 1951) Color: Violet Line 1️⃣ Mexico City → London (1951–1952) - Sculpted and painted in Mexico with José Horna; later brought to Europe through Carrington’s network of surrealist patrons. 2️⃣ London → New York (1950s–1990s)- Acquired by collector Edward James; exhibited internationally and later circulated through New York galleries. 3️⃣ New York → Buenos Aires (2024)- Purchased by Eduardo Costantini at Sotheby’s for $11.3M and added to MALBA’s collection.
After decades in private hands, its appearance at auction triggered renewed scholarship, exhibitions and public access in Latin America- part of a redistributive shift of art from Northern to Southern hemispheres. (Source: https://es.artealdia.com/Noticias/LEONORA-CARRINGTON-LLEGA-AL-MALBA-LUEGO-DE-BATIR-RECORDS
)
For decades, Carrington was undervalued in comparison to male Surrealists like Dalí and Ernst. After the 2022 Venice Biennale (The Milk of Dreams), her market exploded. Auction houses reframed her as a “visionary feminist surrealist,” aligning with the art world’s renewed interest in women modernists. This sale symbolized a cultural correction, and a financial one.(Sources: Artnet News 2024; Chadwick 1986 on feminist re-readings of Carrington.)
In May 2024, this painting sold for US $28.5 million at Sotheby’s (New York), setting a record for Carrington and placing her among the top five most expensive women artists. (Source: El País https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-05-16/el-surrealismo-de-leonora-carrington-rompe-records-en-una-subasta-en-nueva-york.html?)
The painting draws on Celtic legends (told by Carrington’s Irish grandmother), Hermetic ritual, and the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), blending them into a surreal landscape of hybrid creatures and micro-scenes. (Source: El Litoral, Aug 23 2024, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?)
Carrington’s sculptures and paintings were often sidelined by the male-dominated Surrealist movement. Critics like Whitney Chadwick argue that Carrington’s hybrid figures- half woman, half myth- created a new feminist language within Surrealism that directly countered the “male gaze” of her contemporaries. Yet, collectors like Edward James paradoxically both preserved and contained this feminine radicalism by owning and domesticating her works within private collections. (Source: Chadwick, “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness,” Woman’s Art Journal 7, no. 1, 1986, pp. 37–39.)
The inside panel shows a winged unicycle carrying a tower among stars- Varo merging mechanics, mysticism, and feminine transcendence. She visualized transformation as both chemical and spiritual, rooted in medieval alchemy. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
The painting draws on Celtic legends (told by Carrington’s Irish grandmother), Hermetic ritual, and the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), blending them into a surreal landscape of hybrid creatures and micro-scenes. (Source: El Litoral, Aug 23 2024, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
In MALBA’s quiet light, Ícono whispers to its neighbors, such as Carrington’s Cat Woman and Dagoberto, sharing a story of feminine creation and exile that finally found a home in Latin America. Source: Arte Online, ‘Llegan Las distracciones de Dagoberto.’ https://www.arte-online.net/Notas/Llegan-Las-distracciones-de-Dagoberto
After fleeing Europe during WWII, Varo settled in Mexico City and joined a network of exiled Surrealists- Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna, and Wolfgang Paalen among them. Their shared displacement and search for mystical meaning shaped works like Ícono. Source: Wikipedia, “Remedios Varo.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedios_Varo
The work passed through Pierre Matisse Gallery (NY), Albert Landry Galleries (NY, 1960), then a US private collection- finally appearing at Sotheby’s (Lot 20) in 2024. (Source: Sotheby’s-lot page https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction/les-distractions-de-dagobert?)
While Carrington lived modestly in Mexico, her connection to wealthy European patrons allowed her work to survive financially precarious decades. The early postwar art market had little appetite for Surrealism, particularly by women. James’s purchases were not speculative but personal, meaning that La Grande Dame avoided commercial circulation for half a century. Its re-emergence at Sotheby’s in 2024 thus marks a dramatic shift- from private, protective ownership to global financial spectacle. (Source: Ezquiaga, Mercedes, “With an $11m Leonora Carrington Cat Woman Sculpture…,” The Art Newspaper, 2024; Sotheby’s 2024 catalog.)
Before being unveiled at MALBA, La Grande Dame underwent light restoration to stabilize its paint layers. Conservators used non-invasive infrared scanning to assess damage and replaced micro-cracks with reversible filler. The wooden base was reinforced with a humidity-regulating display system- technology that allows delicate organic materials to adapt safely to Buenos Aires’ shifting climate.(Sources: MALBA Conservation Report 2024; Smithsonian Institution “Care of Painted Wood,” 2019.)
Remedios Varo constructed Ícono like a medieval altarpiece, with wooden doors that open to reveal a painted interior. She created it in Mexico City in 1945 after arriving as a refugee from Spain. The hinged form blends Catholic devotion with Surrealist invention. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
In 1951, Carrington created La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) with José Horna, husband of her close friend, photographer Kati Horna. While José carved the monumental wooden form, Carrington painted the surface with fantastical hybrid creatures- making the sculpture both a collaboration and a fusion of artistic disciplines. The piece’s tactile materiality (wood, paint, gold leaf) reflected the artisanal culture of mid-century Mexico City, where exile artists worked outside industrial Europe’s gallery system. (Source: Mac Masters, “Leonora Carrington and Sculpture,” Voices of Mexico 53, 2000, pp. 43–46; Sotheby’s 2024 catalog.)
MALBA places Ícono alongside Carrington and Kahlo, foregrounding women Surrealists as central to Latin American modernism. The display frames their art as acts of spiritual resistance and creative rebirth. Source: MALBA Press Release, ‘Tercer Ojo Exhibition.’ https://malba.org.ar/en/publicacion__tercer-ojo-obras-destacadas__coleccion-costantini-en-malba/
MALBA digitized Ícono in high resolution for Google Arts & Culture, allowing viewers worldwide to zoom into its micro-details. Technology turns this formerly hidden object into a globally shared experience. Source: Google Arts & Culture, ‘Ícono (open) (1945) by Remedios Varo.’ https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/icon-open-remedios-varo/PAEJwiLQFw3oxQ?hl=es
Before the sale, La Grande Dame was shipped from a private American collection to Sotheby’s climate-controlled storage. Special crates kept humidity under 45 percent to protect its painted wood. High-resolution imaging and condition reports were circulated to potential buyers weeks before the auction, a technological infrastructure that turns fragile objects into digitally portable commodities.(Sources: Sotheby’s 2024 technical notes; Smithsonian Mag., May 2024.)
After arrival at MALBA, the painting underwent a conservation check-up before public unveiling in August 2024; the museum emphasises visitor engagement and interpretive programming. Source: La Nación,
https://www.lanacion.com.ar/cultura/muchos-cuadros-dentro-de-un-cuadro-llego-al-malba-la-obra-de-leonora-carrington-de-los-28-millones-nid15082024)
By acquiring La Grande Dame, MALBA joins global institutions like Tate and the Met in reframing women Surrealists as central- not peripheral- to art history. Carrington’s work is now displayed alongside pieces by Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo, highlighting a network of women who defied patriarchal narratives through magic, myth, and self-determination. (Sources: Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, 2020; Helland 1989.)
The painting now speaks in Buenos Aires, a city Varo never visited but where her ideas of hybridity and exile resonate deeply. Here, her work bridges Latin American feminist and European Surrealist narratives. Source: https://malba.org.ar/en/evento/remedios-varo-constelaciones/
Edward James (1907–1984) was one of the most significant collectors and patrons of Surrealist art. He supported Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and later Leonora Carrington, with whom he developed a deep artistic friendship. James financed Carrington’s projects and purchased several of her works, including La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman), which remained in his collection for decades. His estates in West Dean (UK) and Xilitla (Mexico) became sanctuaries for experimental, fantastical art that often blurred the line between patronage and obsession. Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction-2/la-grande-dame-the-cat-woman
Founded in 2001 by Eduardo Costantini, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) was created to preserve and exhibit 20th- and 21st-century Latin American art. The inclusion of Carrington’s La Grande Dame marks a shift toward recognizing the transnational dialogues between Europe and Latin America, especially the networks of artists who settled in Mexico after World War II. (Sources: MALBA Official Website, “About MALBA”; Ezquiaga 2024.)
🩵 Remedios Varo- Ícono (1945) Color: Light Blue Line 1️⃣ Paris → Mexico City (1941) - Contextual route: Varo’s exile from Europe to Mexico after World War II. 2️⃣ Mexico City → Buenos Aires (2010s) - Created and held in Mexican collections until acquired by MALBA to expand its representation of women surrealists.
Today’s auction houses operate as global financial markets. Art is both cultural capital and currency. Carrington’s work moved from the private realm of patrons like Edward James to corporate bidders and museum foundations. Her sculpture thus embodies Howard Becker’s idea of “art worlds” as cooperative networks of artists, collectors, dealers, and institutions where value is socially negotiated, and constantly re-priced.(Sources: Becker, Art Worlds, 1982; Ezquiaga 2024.)
The work now resides in MALBA as part of the “Tercer Ojo” permanent exhibition, signalling a shift: Latin America not just as recipient of modernism, but origin of global avant-garde scenes. (Source: MALBA website, https://malba.org.ar/en/las-distracciones-de-dagoberto-de-leonora-carrington-malba/)
James’s role raises an ethical question central to the study of art distribution: can patronage ever be neutral? His collections preserved radical art that otherwise might have disappeared- but they also kept these works locked in elite spaces, disconnected from public dialogue. Carrington’s sculptures thus existed in suspended animation, dependent on the wealth and whims of collectors. (Source: Becker, Howard S., Art Worlds, 1982 - on systems of cooperation and constraint in art production.)
Ícono remained in private collections for much of the 20th century, rarely exhibited or published. Its secluded life reflects how women Surrealists were often valued quietly by collectors but ignored by mainstream art institutions. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
Creating in Mexico, Carrington defied the male-Dominated Surrealist canon by re-working its symbols (the horse, the lab, the witch) into a language of feminine power. (Source: Arte Online, Aug 22 2024 https://www.arte-online.net/Notas/Llegan-Las-distracciones-de-Dagoberto?)
Cat Lady and Her Friends on their self-discovery journey
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Transcript
The Night of Return
What happens at night, when no one can see (or hear) the artworks...?
ENTER the museum
The museum sleeps. Paintings shimmer faintly under the low lights, and the guards have gone home hours ago. Only the hum of the air vents, the creak of wood, the whisper of history remains. Three figures keep watch: a woman of wood and paint, a dream caught in color, and a golden icon that never fully closes her eyes. They’ve stood like this for years… side by side… silent.
But tonight... something shifts. The air changes. A spark runs through the floor, across the frames, into the carved feet of the tall wooden lady. Her painted chest glows, just faintly, like a heartbeat remembered. And then… she speaks.
The Cat Lady: And it’s night… again. We do it every night, every day of the year. Just standing. No words spoken, no movement made. Still as stone....well, wood, in my case.
The Cat Lady: Do you ever wonder how you were made? What happened after- when you were sent away, sold, borrowed, hidden? We gain consciousness the moment our creators finish us… but our story doesn’t stop there.
Dagobert: You’re dramatic, as always, Dame. But… I get it. We stare, we wait. We let people project their stories onto us. No one ever asks ours.
Dagobert: I tried not to think about it. Too many hands, too many rooms. Better to stay still.
Icon: Maybe they think we don’t remember. But I remember everything. The smell of oil paint. The hum of a radio in a Mexico City studio. The hands that touched me before gloves ever did.
The Icon: And yet… don’t you feel it tonight? Something’s different. Like the air’s humming.
Museum Spirit: You feel correctly. Tonight is no ordinary night. It’s the Night of Return, the one moment every century when artworks may ask the world for answers. Your questions have been heard.
Museum Spirit (smiling): Ah, my wooden friend… that is for you to discover. Each of you holds fragments of your own journey- through hands, across oceans, through time. Follow the trail of those who touched you, traded you, or dreamed you into being. Only then will you know what you’ve become.
The Cat Lady (awed): Then tell us. Who are we? Where did we come from?
Museum Spirit: One path for each of you. Three journeys, three truths. Choose wisely.
The Cat Lady (to the others):Well then. I suppose it’s finally our turn to move.
Las distracciones de Dagoberto
Ícono
La Grande Dame
Map of their journeys
Edward James’s Room
Sotheby’s Auction House
MALBA
Edward James: The Patron and the Protector
The Mexico Years: Collaboration and Craft
Safe, or Trapped?
A Feminine Surrealism Hidden from the Canon
Edward James:Ah. You’ve woken, my dear creature. I remember the day Leonora and José made you. The smell of wood shavings in the Mexico heat. I bought you not for what you were, but for what you contained. Something alive. Something defiant. You were too strange for the London galleries, too feminine for the Surrealist boys. But I kept you safe, didn’t I? Hidden in my collection, among all the other orphans of genius.
The Economics of Preservation
Edward James’s Room
Provenance and Packaging
The Night of the Sale
The Market Shift: From Marginal to Mainstream
From Hammer to Haven
Art as Asset
The Cat Lady: “The air here smells like perfume and numbers. I stand beneath white lights, watched by strangers who call me Lot 47. Their eyes shimmer with desire, not devotion. I once lived in silence in a collector’s hall. Now every breath I take costs a million more. Eleven point three, that’s what they say I’m worth. They applaud when the hammer falls, as if I’ve been freed. But tell me, is it freedom if you’re just changing cages?”
Sotheby’s Auction House, New York
Restoration and Display
The Feminist Reclamation
MALBA’s Vision: Building a Latin American Canon
A Living Legacy
The Cat Lady: “And now I stand again under lights… but these are different. Softer. They don’t glare; they listen. Children point at me and whisper ‘la gata gigante.’ Students take notes, their pens trembling a little. I am not for sale here. I am home, not the one I was made in, not the one I was kept in, but the one where people finally see me.” Funny, isn’t it? To travel half the world just to be recognized by strangers.
From Exile to Belonging
MALBA, Buenos Aires
Mexico City, 1945
Sotheby’s Auction House
MALBA
The Mexican Exile Network
Technique & Materials
The Iconography of Alchemy & Myth
Gender & Surrealism
Carrington: This chaos of midnight brushes and lantern-light...I remember when I painted you. Mexico City, 28 years old, Europe’s war still echoing inside. I poured myth and wood-smoke into your veins. Do you remember that first sigh you took?
Mexico City, 1945
Distribution & Global Visibility
Auction Record & Market Leap
Social Value vs. Market Value
Provenance Journey
Auctioner: White walls, hushed paddles, the clink of champagne and ambition...here you stood for sale. They whispered you were ‘Lot 20.’ You rose faster than I expected. Twenty-eight million dollars. Value soared. But did they see you, or just the price?
Sotheby’s Auction Room, New York, May 2024
MALBA & Latin American Modernism
Conservation & Public Access
Technology & the Viewer’s Experience
Curatorial & Feminist Reframing
MALBA Conservator:From palette to pedestal, now you stand among few, but seen by many. MALBA’s lights soften your wings. Here the city hums outside; you breathe inside. Did you travel for visibility? Because now you’re luminous.
Sotheby’s Auction Room, New York, May 2024
Mexico City, 1945
Between Owners, 1945–2000s
MALBA
The Altarpiece Structure
Exile & Community
The Iconography of Alchemy & Myth
Technique & Materials
Alchemy & Science
Remedio:You were born between the scent of varnish and cigarette smoke. I hummed to myself while painting your sky. I called you my ‘altar for exile.’ You were gold, pearl, and dream, something sacred, but not for any god. You were for women who’d lost their homes and built new ones out of imagination.
Mexico City, 1945
Private Collections & Silence
Transport & Preservation
Rediscovery & Museum Interest
Icona:They closed my doors for decades. I lived in darkness, the smell of cedar and old dust. No one knew the glow I carried inside. People whispered about me- ‘a lost Varo,’ they said, but I just waited, patient as gold leaf, for someone to open me again.
Between Owners, 1945–2000s
MALBA’s Feminist Curating
Digital Access & New Audiences
Cultural Recontextualization
Legacy & Voice
Icono:They’ve opened my doors again. I can finally breathe. People stop, tilt their heads, and I hear them whisper about me. I’ve crossed oceans, wars, collectors, and crates just to stand here, in a room where my light belongs.
MALBA, Buenos Aires
La Grande Dame
Dagoberto
Icono
The work is oil on gilded wood with mother-of-pearl inlay (60 × 73.2 × 5.5 cm). Varo’s use of shimmering surfaces and intricate joinery recalls both Spanish craft traditions and sacred objects, translating them into the dreamlike logic of Surrealism.Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/.
After the sale, the sculpture was crated again for transport to Argentina. MALBA announced its arrival on social media with the caption: “¡La Grande Dame ya está en sala!” The journey closed a circle between Carrington’s life in Mexico and her new residence in Latin America’s most important modern art museum, a transfer of both geography and symbolic power. (Sources: MALBA Facebook Post, Nov 2024; La Nación 2024.)
Executed in 1945 when Carrington was 28, the work is tempera on masonite (75.6 × 87 cm) and remains one of her most detailed paintings. (Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction/les-distractions-de-dagobert )
The painting’s gilded wood and mother-of-pearl make it especially fragile. Before entering MALBA, it underwent transport in climate-controlled containers and ultraviolet analysis to stabilize the surface, an example of modern technological care.Source: Smithsonian Institution, ‘Care of Painted Wood Objects.’ https://www.si.edu/mci/downloads/RELACT/paintedwood.pdf
After fleeing Europe during WWII, Leonora Carrington settled in Mexico in 1942. Surrounded by exiled Surrealists and local intellectuals, she developed her own style that fused Celtic myth, Mexican folklore, and alchemy. The Distractions of Dagobert (1945) was one of her first large-scale works painted in Mexico City’s Roma district.(Sources: Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (1985); Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (2004).)
From the 1990s onward, scholars and museums began re-examining Varo’s role in Surrealism. Ícono was gradually recognized as a key piece bridging European and Latin American modernism. Source: Art Al Día, “Remedios Varo en el MALBA.” https://es.artealdia.com/Noticias/Remedios-Varo-en-el-MALBA
In the new gallery, La Grande Dame stands close to Carrington’s The Distractions of Dagobert. Visitors often see the two as companions: one vertical, monumental, protective; the other fluid and dreamlike. Together, they narrate Carrington’s entire spectrum- from rebellion to transcendence. (Sources: MALBA Gallery Notes 2025; Robinson 2023 on mythic feminine imagery.)
🧡 Leonora Carrington - Las Distracciones de Dagoberto (1945) Color: Orange Line 1️⃣ Mexico City → New York (1945–1948) - Painted in postwar Mexico, exhibited through the Pierre Matisse Gallery. 2️⃣ New York → Private Collection (U.S.) (1950s–2020) - Sold to a private collector; unseen for decades. 3️⃣ New York → Buenos Aires (2024) - Auctioned at Sotheby’s for $28.4M, acquired by Costantini for MALBA.
On 15 May 2024, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale in New York presented La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) as Lot 47. The auctioneer opened bidding at $6 million; within five minutes the price climbed to $11.3 million with fees, a record for a Carrington sculpture. Eduardo Costantini, founder of MALBA in Buenos Aires, won after a brief duel with another anonymous collector. (Sources: Sotheby’s catalog May 2024; Ezquiaga 2024, The Art Newspaper; Artnet News, 15 May 2024.)
Carrington spent most of her life in Mexico, far from her birthplace in England. Lora Markova describes her identity as “a mosaic of exile and belonging.” The sculpture’s arrival in Buenos Aires mirrors Carrington’s own hybrid legacy- a British-born artist who became a symbol of Latin American surrealism. Her “afterlife” at MALBA embodies this cross-cultural belonging.(Sources: Markova, “Leonora Carrington’s Imaginary Homelands,” 2020.)
The painting hangs in a section alongside works by Varo and Kahlo, reframing surrealist history with the feminine and the transnational at its core. (Source: El Litoral, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?)
💜 Leonora Carrington- La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman, 1951) Color: Violet Line 1️⃣ Mexico City → London (1951–1952) - Sculpted and painted in Mexico with José Horna; later brought to Europe through Carrington’s network of surrealist patrons. 2️⃣ London → New York (1950s–1990s)- Acquired by collector Edward James; exhibited internationally and later circulated through New York galleries. 3️⃣ New York → Buenos Aires (2024)- Purchased by Eduardo Costantini at Sotheby’s for $11.3M and added to MALBA’s collection.
After decades in private hands, its appearance at auction triggered renewed scholarship, exhibitions and public access in Latin America- part of a redistributive shift of art from Northern to Southern hemispheres. (Source: https://es.artealdia.com/Noticias/LEONORA-CARRINGTON-LLEGA-AL-MALBA-LUEGO-DE-BATIR-RECORDS )
For decades, Carrington was undervalued in comparison to male Surrealists like Dalí and Ernst. After the 2022 Venice Biennale (The Milk of Dreams), her market exploded. Auction houses reframed her as a “visionary feminist surrealist,” aligning with the art world’s renewed interest in women modernists. This sale symbolized a cultural correction, and a financial one.(Sources: Artnet News 2024; Chadwick 1986 on feminist re-readings of Carrington.)
In May 2024, this painting sold for US $28.5 million at Sotheby’s (New York), setting a record for Carrington and placing her among the top five most expensive women artists. (Source: El País https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-05-16/el-surrealismo-de-leonora-carrington-rompe-records-en-una-subasta-en-nueva-york.html?)
The painting draws on Celtic legends (told by Carrington’s Irish grandmother), Hermetic ritual, and the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), blending them into a surreal landscape of hybrid creatures and micro-scenes. (Source: El Litoral, Aug 23 2024, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?)
Carrington’s sculptures and paintings were often sidelined by the male-dominated Surrealist movement. Critics like Whitney Chadwick argue that Carrington’s hybrid figures- half woman, half myth- created a new feminist language within Surrealism that directly countered the “male gaze” of her contemporaries. Yet, collectors like Edward James paradoxically both preserved and contained this feminine radicalism by owning and domesticating her works within private collections. (Source: Chadwick, “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness,” Woman’s Art Journal 7, no. 1, 1986, pp. 37–39.)
The inside panel shows a winged unicycle carrying a tower among stars- Varo merging mechanics, mysticism, and feminine transcendence. She visualized transformation as both chemical and spiritual, rooted in medieval alchemy. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
The painting draws on Celtic legends (told by Carrington’s Irish grandmother), Hermetic ritual, and the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), blending them into a surreal landscape of hybrid creatures and micro-scenes. (Source: El Litoral, Aug 23 2024, https://www.ellitoral.com/arte/leonora-carrington-dagoberto-malba-costantini-subasta-sothebys-arte-surrealista-pintura_0_zD8QKgf71k.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
In MALBA’s quiet light, Ícono whispers to its neighbors, such as Carrington’s Cat Woman and Dagoberto, sharing a story of feminine creation and exile that finally found a home in Latin America. Source: Arte Online, ‘Llegan Las distracciones de Dagoberto.’ https://www.arte-online.net/Notas/Llegan-Las-distracciones-de-Dagoberto
After fleeing Europe during WWII, Varo settled in Mexico City and joined a network of exiled Surrealists- Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna, and Wolfgang Paalen among them. Their shared displacement and search for mystical meaning shaped works like Ícono. Source: Wikipedia, “Remedios Varo.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedios_Varo
The work passed through Pierre Matisse Gallery (NY), Albert Landry Galleries (NY, 1960), then a US private collection- finally appearing at Sotheby’s (Lot 20) in 2024. (Source: Sotheby’s-lot page https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction/les-distractions-de-dagobert?)
While Carrington lived modestly in Mexico, her connection to wealthy European patrons allowed her work to survive financially precarious decades. The early postwar art market had little appetite for Surrealism, particularly by women. James’s purchases were not speculative but personal, meaning that La Grande Dame avoided commercial circulation for half a century. Its re-emergence at Sotheby’s in 2024 thus marks a dramatic shift- from private, protective ownership to global financial spectacle. (Source: Ezquiaga, Mercedes, “With an $11m Leonora Carrington Cat Woman Sculpture…,” The Art Newspaper, 2024; Sotheby’s 2024 catalog.)
Before being unveiled at MALBA, La Grande Dame underwent light restoration to stabilize its paint layers. Conservators used non-invasive infrared scanning to assess damage and replaced micro-cracks with reversible filler. The wooden base was reinforced with a humidity-regulating display system- technology that allows delicate organic materials to adapt safely to Buenos Aires’ shifting climate.(Sources: MALBA Conservation Report 2024; Smithsonian Institution “Care of Painted Wood,” 2019.)
Remedios Varo constructed Ícono like a medieval altarpiece, with wooden doors that open to reveal a painted interior. She created it in Mexico City in 1945 after arriving as a refugee from Spain. The hinged form blends Catholic devotion with Surrealist invention. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
In 1951, Carrington created La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) with José Horna, husband of her close friend, photographer Kati Horna. While José carved the monumental wooden form, Carrington painted the surface with fantastical hybrid creatures- making the sculpture both a collaboration and a fusion of artistic disciplines. The piece’s tactile materiality (wood, paint, gold leaf) reflected the artisanal culture of mid-century Mexico City, where exile artists worked outside industrial Europe’s gallery system. (Source: Mac Masters, “Leonora Carrington and Sculpture,” Voices of Mexico 53, 2000, pp. 43–46; Sotheby’s 2024 catalog.)
MALBA places Ícono alongside Carrington and Kahlo, foregrounding women Surrealists as central to Latin American modernism. The display frames their art as acts of spiritual resistance and creative rebirth. Source: MALBA Press Release, ‘Tercer Ojo Exhibition.’ https://malba.org.ar/en/publicacion__tercer-ojo-obras-destacadas__coleccion-costantini-en-malba/
MALBA digitized Ícono in high resolution for Google Arts & Culture, allowing viewers worldwide to zoom into its micro-details. Technology turns this formerly hidden object into a globally shared experience. Source: Google Arts & Culture, ‘Ícono (open) (1945) by Remedios Varo.’ https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/icon-open-remedios-varo/PAEJwiLQFw3oxQ?hl=es
Before the sale, La Grande Dame was shipped from a private American collection to Sotheby’s climate-controlled storage. Special crates kept humidity under 45 percent to protect its painted wood. High-resolution imaging and condition reports were circulated to potential buyers weeks before the auction, a technological infrastructure that turns fragile objects into digitally portable commodities.(Sources: Sotheby’s 2024 technical notes; Smithsonian Mag., May 2024.)
After arrival at MALBA, the painting underwent a conservation check-up before public unveiling in August 2024; the museum emphasises visitor engagement and interpretive programming. Source: La Nación, https://www.lanacion.com.ar/cultura/muchos-cuadros-dentro-de-un-cuadro-llego-al-malba-la-obra-de-leonora-carrington-de-los-28-millones-nid15082024)
By acquiring La Grande Dame, MALBA joins global institutions like Tate and the Met in reframing women Surrealists as central- not peripheral- to art history. Carrington’s work is now displayed alongside pieces by Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo, highlighting a network of women who defied patriarchal narratives through magic, myth, and self-determination. (Sources: Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, 2020; Helland 1989.)
The painting now speaks in Buenos Aires, a city Varo never visited but where her ideas of hybridity and exile resonate deeply. Here, her work bridges Latin American feminist and European Surrealist narratives. Source: https://malba.org.ar/en/evento/remedios-varo-constelaciones/
Edward James (1907–1984) was one of the most significant collectors and patrons of Surrealist art. He supported Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and later Leonora Carrington, with whom he developed a deep artistic friendship. James financed Carrington’s projects and purchased several of her works, including La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman), which remained in his collection for decades. His estates in West Dean (UK) and Xilitla (Mexico) became sanctuaries for experimental, fantastical art that often blurred the line between patronage and obsession. Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/modern-evening-auction-2/la-grande-dame-the-cat-woman
Founded in 2001 by Eduardo Costantini, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) was created to preserve and exhibit 20th- and 21st-century Latin American art. The inclusion of Carrington’s La Grande Dame marks a shift toward recognizing the transnational dialogues between Europe and Latin America, especially the networks of artists who settled in Mexico after World War II. (Sources: MALBA Official Website, “About MALBA”; Ezquiaga 2024.)
🩵 Remedios Varo- Ícono (1945) Color: Light Blue Line 1️⃣ Paris → Mexico City (1941) - Contextual route: Varo’s exile from Europe to Mexico after World War II. 2️⃣ Mexico City → Buenos Aires (2010s) - Created and held in Mexican collections until acquired by MALBA to expand its representation of women surrealists.
Today’s auction houses operate as global financial markets. Art is both cultural capital and currency. Carrington’s work moved from the private realm of patrons like Edward James to corporate bidders and museum foundations. Her sculpture thus embodies Howard Becker’s idea of “art worlds” as cooperative networks of artists, collectors, dealers, and institutions where value is socially negotiated, and constantly re-priced.(Sources: Becker, Art Worlds, 1982; Ezquiaga 2024.)
The work now resides in MALBA as part of the “Tercer Ojo” permanent exhibition, signalling a shift: Latin America not just as recipient of modernism, but origin of global avant-garde scenes. (Source: MALBA website, https://malba.org.ar/en/las-distracciones-de-dagoberto-de-leonora-carrington-malba/)
James’s role raises an ethical question central to the study of art distribution: can patronage ever be neutral? His collections preserved radical art that otherwise might have disappeared- but they also kept these works locked in elite spaces, disconnected from public dialogue. Carrington’s sculptures thus existed in suspended animation, dependent on the wealth and whims of collectors. (Source: Becker, Howard S., Art Worlds, 1982 - on systems of cooperation and constraint in art production.)
Ícono remained in private collections for much of the 20th century, rarely exhibited or published. Its secluded life reflects how women Surrealists were often valued quietly by collectors but ignored by mainstream art institutions. Source: MALBA website, https://coleccion.malba.org.ar/icono/
Creating in Mexico, Carrington defied the male-Dominated Surrealist canon by re-working its symbols (the horse, the lab, the witch) into a language of feminine power. (Source: Arte Online, Aug 22 2024 https://www.arte-online.net/Notas/Llegan-Las-distracciones-de-Dagoberto?)