Emerging on the market after nearly 30 years, a rare and exceptional sculpture by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is the shining star in the forthcoming Modern Evening Sale at Sotheby’s in New York. Regarded as the artist’s sculptural magnum opus, Carrington’s “La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman)” (1951) is expected to fetch between $5 million and $7 million on November 18.
It’s possible that the figures are a conservative estimate, considering that Carrington’s major painting “Les Distractions de Dagobert” (1945) smashed records in May when it sold for $28.5 million at Sotheby’s — eclipsing her previous top sale price of $3.3 million. Standing at nearly 80 inches tall (~203 cm), the carved and painted wood statue is “undoubtedly the greatest sculpture in Carrington’s celebrated body of work” according to Anna Di Stasi, who heads Sotheby’s Latin American Art.
Like “Les Distractions de Dagobert,” Carrington’s poised cat woman embodies the artist’s worldly, historical, and off-beat interests through a variety of vibrantly painted vignettes referencing cross-cultural folkloric traditions and iconographies rooted in the feminine and the divine. Across the wooden figure’s chest, Carrington painted a woman with a goose for a head offers an egg to the character across from her who caresses a smaller, child-like being at her side. Beneath them, two bound figures lay peacefully in a forest as flowers and animals sprout from their bodies, surrounded by woodland predators and prey conveyed in a petroglyphic style with soft detailing.
Right: Detail of painted deity and spirits on the back of “La Grande Dame”
On the back of “La Grande Dame,” Carrington refers to the exchange of the egg when depicting a wolf-like deity cradling a spirit embodying a dandelion seed. A full-fledged dandelion deity stands on top of the wolf deity, holding a small seed or speck of light.
British-born Carrington, who settled in Mexico City in 1942 and lived there for the rest of her life, worked closely with woodworker José Horna, the husband of her close friend and colleague Kati Horna, to realize this sculpture. The cat head, narrow figure, and elongated appendages reference the Ancient Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, who is said to have protected Lower Egypt from disease and evil spirits as well as being regarded as symbolic of pregnancy and childbirth.
Formerly part of the collection of British poet and surrealist patron Edward James, “La Grande Dame” has since made appearances in exhibitions at Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, among other institutions across the world.
“‘La Grande Dame’ is a remarkable expression of Leonora Carrington’s mythical imagination, offering fresh insight into her creative vision as an artist,” said Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and Modern Art in the Americas. “An undeniable masterpiece, it occupies a central place in her artistic legacy.”
“La Grande Dame” will go on view as a part of the pre-sale exhibition at Sotheby’s New York starting Friday, November 8.
