Women Artists
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : O'Keeffe Central and South Americas Mexico Eastern Europe Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman French sculpture US painting < 1940 Mitchell
Chronology : 1927 1932 1940-1949 1940 1945 1949 1959 1990-1999 1991 1996 1997
See also : O'Keeffe Central and South Americas Mexico Eastern Europe Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman French sculpture US painting < 1940 Mitchell
Chronology : 1927 1932 1940-1949 1940 1945 1949 1959 1990-1999 1991 1996 1997
masterpiece
1872 Le Berceau by Morisot
Musée d'Orsay
The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Berthe Morisot's Le Berceau (The Cradle), 1872, housed in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of her most iconic and famous works. Painted in oil on canvas, it depicts the artist's sister Edma Pontillon gazing tenderly at her sleeping daughter Blanche in a cradle, with a delicate net curtain partially drawn across the scene.
Artist's Motivation
Morisot painted Le Berceau in 1872 as her first exploration of motherhood, a theme that would become central to her oeuvre. The work captures an intimate, private moment of maternal love and protection—Edma's gentle gaze, the mirroring of arms between mother and child, and the protective gesture of drawing the curtain create a profound sense of tenderness and emotional closeness. This was motivated by Morisot's focus on domestic life and the everyday experiences of women in bourgeois society, subjects often overlooked in grand historical or public art. The painting reflects her interest in modern femininity, psychological nuance (including subtle weariness and inner complexity in motherhood), and the quiet beauty of family bonds. Unlike anecdotal or picturesque treatments of childhood in Salon art, Morisot aimed for simplicity and direct emotional resonance, allowing viewers to connect personally.
Influences
Morisot's style in Le Berceau shows clear ties to Édouard Manet, whom she met in 1868 and whose brother Eugène she later married in 1874. Manet's influence encouraged her to focus more on portraits, faces, and brighter palettes, while their mutual exchanges helped lighten his own work toward plein-air approaches. She also drew from earlier mentors like Camille Corot (who advised her on painting from nature) and copied works at the Louvre early on. Broader Impressionist ideas—loose, fluid brushwork, emphasis on light, and rejection of strict academic finish—are evident in the painting's delicate, hazy veils of color and sketch-like quality. It parallels contemporary works like Monet's depictions of his son in a cradle, signaling a new, modern representation of childhood and family intimacy.
Breakthrough
Le Berceau marked a significant moment when Morisot exhibited it at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874—the inaugural show of the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. As the only woman in the group (and one of its key organizers), her inclusion was groundbreaking. The painting received some positive critical notice for its grace, elegance, and delicate execution—one of the few works at the show to garner praise amid widespread ridicule of the movement. Though it didn't sell and remained in her collection, it helped establish her as a serious Impressionist voice, challenging gender barriers and Salon dominance.
Legacy
Le Berceau remains Morisot's most celebrated painting and a cornerstone of Impressionism, often seen as a key to understanding the movement's revolutionary temperament—its shift toward psychological depth, intimate subjects, and innovative techniques over academic polish. It highlights Morisot's pioneering role as a female artist depicting women's private worlds (motherhood, domesticity, fashion) from an insider's perspective, inaccessible to most male painters. Her nuanced portrayal of maternal experience—tender yet edged with realism—feels strikingly modern, influencing later explorations of gender and everyday life in art. Today, it exemplifies how Impressionism expanded art's boundaries, and Morisot's contributions as a leading figure (not just a "token" woman) continue to be reevaluated for their lasting impact on feminist art history and the movement's legacy.
Berthe Morisot's Le Berceau (The Cradle), 1872, housed in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of her most iconic and famous works. Painted in oil on canvas, it depicts the artist's sister Edma Pontillon gazing tenderly at her sleeping daughter Blanche in a cradle, with a delicate net curtain partially drawn across the scene.
Artist's Motivation
Morisot painted Le Berceau in 1872 as her first exploration of motherhood, a theme that would become central to her oeuvre. The work captures an intimate, private moment of maternal love and protection—Edma's gentle gaze, the mirroring of arms between mother and child, and the protective gesture of drawing the curtain create a profound sense of tenderness and emotional closeness. This was motivated by Morisot's focus on domestic life and the everyday experiences of women in bourgeois society, subjects often overlooked in grand historical or public art. The painting reflects her interest in modern femininity, psychological nuance (including subtle weariness and inner complexity in motherhood), and the quiet beauty of family bonds. Unlike anecdotal or picturesque treatments of childhood in Salon art, Morisot aimed for simplicity and direct emotional resonance, allowing viewers to connect personally.
Influences
Morisot's style in Le Berceau shows clear ties to Édouard Manet, whom she met in 1868 and whose brother Eugène she later married in 1874. Manet's influence encouraged her to focus more on portraits, faces, and brighter palettes, while their mutual exchanges helped lighten his own work toward plein-air approaches. She also drew from earlier mentors like Camille Corot (who advised her on painting from nature) and copied works at the Louvre early on. Broader Impressionist ideas—loose, fluid brushwork, emphasis on light, and rejection of strict academic finish—are evident in the painting's delicate, hazy veils of color and sketch-like quality. It parallels contemporary works like Monet's depictions of his son in a cradle, signaling a new, modern representation of childhood and family intimacy.
Breakthrough
Le Berceau marked a significant moment when Morisot exhibited it at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874—the inaugural show of the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. As the only woman in the group (and one of its key organizers), her inclusion was groundbreaking. The painting received some positive critical notice for its grace, elegance, and delicate execution—one of the few works at the show to garner praise amid widespread ridicule of the movement. Though it didn't sell and remained in her collection, it helped establish her as a serious Impressionist voice, challenging gender barriers and Salon dominance.
Legacy
Le Berceau remains Morisot's most celebrated painting and a cornerstone of Impressionism, often seen as a key to understanding the movement's revolutionary temperament—its shift toward psychological depth, intimate subjects, and innovative techniques over academic polish. It highlights Morisot's pioneering role as a female artist depicting women's private worlds (motherhood, domesticity, fashion) from an insider's perspective, inaccessible to most male painters. Her nuanced portrayal of maternal experience—tender yet edged with realism—feels strikingly modern, influencing later explorations of gender and everyday life in art. Today, it exemplifies how Impressionism expanded art's boundaries, and Morisot's contributions as a leading figure (not just a "token" woman) continue to be reevaluated for their lasting impact on feminist art history and the movement's legacy.
O'KEEFFE
1
1927 White Rose with Larkspur
2022 SOLD for $ 26.7M by Christie's
Alfred Stieglitz was one of the first to understand the strong link between photography and art, and his gallery in New York was a meeting point for painters and photographers. After being one of the best authors of photos of the city, he became passionately interested in one subject, Georgia O'Keeffe, and married her in 1924.
It was not enough for Georgia to be Stieglitz's wife and model. She finds a small paradise in the grasslands around Lake George in upstate New York. Nature knows how to create perfect shapes much better than an artist can do. She watches the flowering of the weeds.
Georgia was an artist, and such a creative environment transformed her approach. She showed in her paintings some details of nature and also landscape shapes coming close to abstraction, like Weston, like Cunningham. Like them, she wanted to share what she saw.
In 1924, she began a series of oils on canvas on the theme of petunia flowers. The painting allowed a larger, and therefore more spectacular, size than the usual photos of the time.
An oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm painted in 1926 features two flowers of petunia. One is purple and almost black, and the other is pinkish and almost white. This opposition irresistibly evokes the positive negative duality of photography. It was sold for $ 4.1M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010, lot 32. In the same year Man Ray, who knew Stieglitz, realized his famous photo "Noire et Blanche" (Black and White), showing a white woman's head next to a black African mask.
Georgia expresses the beauty of white flowers in a variety of viewpoints that reveal their sublime geometries in the process of their outbreak.
White rose with larkspur No. 1, oil on canvas 91 x 73 cm painted in 1927, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 9. It had been kept by the artist until she presented it to a friend in 1946.
The pale flesh colored rose is displayed in a surrounding of blue and purple larkspur blooms and green leaves that fills the whole surface. The No. 2 of the same title hang until 1980 in Georgia's bedroom at Abiquiu. In this 1927 series the artist comes back once again to the relation between flower and abstraction, or in some tentative interpretation between flower and female human sex.
In a very different theme, another study of a pale tone, 61 x 91 cm painted in 1930, was sold for $ 3.4M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010. Closer to the geometric abstraction, it features the mollusk that lives inside a clam shell.
It was not enough for Georgia to be Stieglitz's wife and model. She finds a small paradise in the grasslands around Lake George in upstate New York. Nature knows how to create perfect shapes much better than an artist can do. She watches the flowering of the weeds.
Georgia was an artist, and such a creative environment transformed her approach. She showed in her paintings some details of nature and also landscape shapes coming close to abstraction, like Weston, like Cunningham. Like them, she wanted to share what she saw.
In 1924, she began a series of oils on canvas on the theme of petunia flowers. The painting allowed a larger, and therefore more spectacular, size than the usual photos of the time.
An oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm painted in 1926 features two flowers of petunia. One is purple and almost black, and the other is pinkish and almost white. This opposition irresistibly evokes the positive negative duality of photography. It was sold for $ 4.1M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010, lot 32. In the same year Man Ray, who knew Stieglitz, realized his famous photo "Noire et Blanche" (Black and White), showing a white woman's head next to a black African mask.
Georgia expresses the beauty of white flowers in a variety of viewpoints that reveal their sublime geometries in the process of their outbreak.
White rose with larkspur No. 1, oil on canvas 91 x 73 cm painted in 1927, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 9. It had been kept by the artist until she presented it to a friend in 1946.
The pale flesh colored rose is displayed in a surrounding of blue and purple larkspur blooms and green leaves that fills the whole surface. The No. 2 of the same title hang until 1980 in Georgia's bedroom at Abiquiu. In this 1927 series the artist comes back once again to the relation between flower and abstraction, or in some tentative interpretation between flower and female human sex.
In a very different theme, another study of a pale tone, 61 x 91 cm painted in 1930, was sold for $ 3.4M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010. Closer to the geometric abstraction, it features the mollusk that lives inside a clam shell.
2
1932 Jimson Weed
2014 SOLD for $ 44.4M by Sotheby's
The beauty of nature was the main inspiration for Georgia O'Keeffe. Painter amidst the circle of photographers led by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, she wanted to see everything from larger landscapes to tiniest details. From 1929 she regularly visited the wonderful site of Taos.
She is not a botanist but there is no need to be a scientist for being fascinated by the datura, a wild herb that is particularly abundant in New Mexico. Its trumpet flowers appear at the cool of the evening with subtle shades of colors on a white background. A powerful hallucinogen, this plant is locally called Jimson weed and most commonly Devil's snare.
Painted in 1932, Jimson weed - white flower No.1 is a beautiful portrait of a flower. Inspired by macrophotography, it is an invitation to enter full front into the intimate secrets of a disproportionately enlarged datura. This oil on canvas is measuring 122 x 107 cm, a large format for the artist at that time.
This painting was sold for $ 44.4M from an estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on November 20, 2014, lot 11. It was deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Dec 29, 2014
#CountingDown to 2015: Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1' sold for $44.4m
She is not a botanist but there is no need to be a scientist for being fascinated by the datura, a wild herb that is particularly abundant in New Mexico. Its trumpet flowers appear at the cool of the evening with subtle shades of colors on a white background. A powerful hallucinogen, this plant is locally called Jimson weed and most commonly Devil's snare.
Painted in 1932, Jimson weed - white flower No.1 is a beautiful portrait of a flower. Inspired by macrophotography, it is an invitation to enter full front into the intimate secrets of a disproportionately enlarged datura. This oil on canvas is measuring 122 x 107 cm, a large format for the artist at that time.
This painting was sold for $ 44.4M from an estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on November 20, 2014, lot 11. It was deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Dec 29, 2014
#CountingDown to 2015: Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1' sold for $44.4m
- This December 2014 Sotheby's post highlights the November sale of Georgia O'Keeffe's 1932 painting 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1' for $44.4 million, shattering the auction record for a female artist by over tripling the prior high of $12.7 million.
- The oil-on-canvas work, depicting a magnified jimson weed flower with symbolic undertones of sensuality and nature, exceeded its $10-15 million estimate and was consigned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum to fund acquisitions.
- As part of a New Year's countdown series, the post underscores Sotheby's role in elevating women in art markets, with the painting now displayed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
KAHLO
1
1940 El Sueno (La Carna)
2025 SOLD for $ 55M by Sotheby's
El sueño (La cama), oil on canvas 74 x 98 cm painted in 1940 by Frida Kahlo in 1940, was sold for $ 55M from a lower estimate of $ 40M for sale by Sotheby's on November 20, 2025, lot 13. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Asking Grok its significance in the career of the artist.
Grok thought :
Frida Kahlo's El sueño (La cama) (The Dream [The Bed]), painted in 1940, is a poignant self-portrait that encapsulates key themes in her oeuvre, including mortality, the interplay between life and death, personal suffering, and dreamlike surrealism. Measuring 74 by 98 cm and executed in oil on canvas, the work depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed floating amid clouds, her body partially entwined in thorny vines that evoke both growth and entrapment. Above her, on the bed's canopy, lies a life-sized papier-mâché skeleton (a "Judas" figure from Mexican folk tradition, which Kahlo kept in her real bedroom as a memento mori), rigged with dynamite and a lit fuse—symbolizing imminent danger and the fragility of existence. This juxtaposition of serene repose below and explosive peril above reflects Kahlo's lifelong preoccupation with death, informed by her chronic pain from a 1925 bus accident, multiple surgeries, miscarriages, and emotional turmoil.
In the context of Kahlo's career, El sueño (La cama) marks a significant moment during a period of intense personal upheaval and artistic evolution. Created shortly after her 1939 divorce from Diego Rivera (whom she remarried later in 1940) and amid her affair with Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated that year, the painting channels her psychological and physical anguish into a deeply introspective narrative. It exemplifies her shift toward more symbolic, introspective works in the late 1930s and early 1940s, blending autobiographical elements with Mexican cultural motifs and surrealist influences—though Kahlo famously rejected the Surrealist label, insisting her art depicted her reality. This piece stands out as one of her most intimate explorations of vulnerability, where the bed (a recurring motif representing confinement due to her health issues) becomes a stage for confronting mortality while asserting life's persistence through natural imagery like vines.
The painting's importance is underscored by its extensive exhibition history, including major retrospectives at Tate Modern (2005), the Walker Art Center (2007-08), and the Guggenheim Museum (1999), as well as its inclusion in seminal publications like Hayden Herrera's Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (1991) and Luis-Martín Lozano's The Complete Paintings of Frida Kahlo (2021), where it has even graced book covers. It has been analyzed as a testament to Kahlo's resilience, transforming personal trauma into universal symbols of human fragility. Provenance traces back to Galería Misrachi in Mexico City, with ownership passing through private collections before its last auction at Sotheby's in 1980; its reappearance at Sotheby's Exquisite Corpus Evening Auction on November 20, 2025 (lot 13, estimated at $40-60 million), highlights its rarity and market value, potentially shattering her auction record and affirming her status as a 20th-century icon.
Pre sale Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Sep 19
More than 80 Surrealist treasures from a Private Collection are coming to The New York Sales in November—including Frida Kahlo’s intimate self-portrait that is poised to set a new auction record. https://bit.ly/4mo8kGU
Asking Grok its significance in the career of the artist.
Grok thought :
Frida Kahlo's El sueño (La cama) (The Dream [The Bed]), painted in 1940, is a poignant self-portrait that encapsulates key themes in her oeuvre, including mortality, the interplay between life and death, personal suffering, and dreamlike surrealism. Measuring 74 by 98 cm and executed in oil on canvas, the work depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed floating amid clouds, her body partially entwined in thorny vines that evoke both growth and entrapment. Above her, on the bed's canopy, lies a life-sized papier-mâché skeleton (a "Judas" figure from Mexican folk tradition, which Kahlo kept in her real bedroom as a memento mori), rigged with dynamite and a lit fuse—symbolizing imminent danger and the fragility of existence. This juxtaposition of serene repose below and explosive peril above reflects Kahlo's lifelong preoccupation with death, informed by her chronic pain from a 1925 bus accident, multiple surgeries, miscarriages, and emotional turmoil.
In the context of Kahlo's career, El sueño (La cama) marks a significant moment during a period of intense personal upheaval and artistic evolution. Created shortly after her 1939 divorce from Diego Rivera (whom she remarried later in 1940) and amid her affair with Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated that year, the painting channels her psychological and physical anguish into a deeply introspective narrative. It exemplifies her shift toward more symbolic, introspective works in the late 1930s and early 1940s, blending autobiographical elements with Mexican cultural motifs and surrealist influences—though Kahlo famously rejected the Surrealist label, insisting her art depicted her reality. This piece stands out as one of her most intimate explorations of vulnerability, where the bed (a recurring motif representing confinement due to her health issues) becomes a stage for confronting mortality while asserting life's persistence through natural imagery like vines.
The painting's importance is underscored by its extensive exhibition history, including major retrospectives at Tate Modern (2005), the Walker Art Center (2007-08), and the Guggenheim Museum (1999), as well as its inclusion in seminal publications like Hayden Herrera's Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (1991) and Luis-Martín Lozano's The Complete Paintings of Frida Kahlo (2021), where it has even graced book covers. It has been analyzed as a testament to Kahlo's resilience, transforming personal trauma into universal symbols of human fragility. Provenance traces back to Galería Misrachi in Mexico City, with ownership passing through private collections before its last auction at Sotheby's in 1980; its reappearance at Sotheby's Exquisite Corpus Evening Auction on November 20, 2025 (lot 13, estimated at $40-60 million), highlights its rarity and market value, potentially shattering her auction record and affirming her status as a 20th-century icon.
Pre sale Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Sep 19
More than 80 Surrealist treasures from a Private Collection are coming to The New York Sales in November—including Frida Kahlo’s intimate self-portrait that is poised to set a new auction record. https://bit.ly/4mo8kGU
- Sotheby's post highlights the upcoming "Exquisite Corpus" auction in New York on November 20-21, 2025, showcasing over 80 Surrealist works from a private collection, emphasizing psychological depth in 20th-century art.
- The centerpiece is Frida Kahlo's 1940 oil "El sueño (La cama)", a dreamlike self-portrait of the artist asleep on a bed atop a barren landscape, carrying a $40-60 million estimate that could shatter her prior $34.9 million record and top the $44.4 million benchmark for any female artist.
- Amid rising demand for women-led Surrealism, the sale includes pieces by Miró, Picasso, and Kandinsky, providing collectors access to rare modernist narratives on identity and the subconscious.
'El sueño (La cama)' by Frida Kahlo soars to $54.7 million, becoming the most valuable work by a woman artist ever sold at auction.
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) November 21, 2025
Painted in 1940 during a pivotal decade in her career, marked by her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera. pic.twitter.com/t6Sni7fIKT
2
1949 Diego y yo
2021 SOLD for $ 35M by Sotheby's
Frida Kahlo suffered a lifelong intense pain in her back after an accident. She courageously faced her condition by her art and by her quest for a passion out of the ordinary, including political commitment and bisexuality. She found her partner, unfaithful husband and accomplice in the Communist artist Diego Rivera, 20 years older than her.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Nov 17, 2021
#AuctionUpdate: Frida Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait ‘Diego y yo (Diego and I)’ soars to $34.9M, smashing the artist’s previous $8 million public auction record. This enigmatic work is Kahlo’s final ‘bust’ self-portrait completed before her death in 1954.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Nov 17, 2021
#AuctionUpdate: Frida Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait ‘Diego y yo (Diego and I)’ soars to $34.9M, smashing the artist’s previous $8 million public auction record. This enigmatic work is Kahlo’s final ‘bust’ self-portrait completed before her death in 1954.
- Sotheby's 2021 post celebrates the $34.9 million auction sale of Frida Kahlo's 1949 oil-on-masonite self-portrait "Diego y yo," depicting Kahlo with tears and Diego Rivera's face emerging from her forehead, symbolizing her enduring emotional turmoil in their marriage.
- The work, Kahlo's last bust-length self-portrait before her 1954 death from health complications, shattered her prior $8 million record and was consigned by the Oppenheimer family after decades in private collection.
- As of November 2025, this sale's record has been eclipsed by Kahlo's "El sueño (La cama)" fetching $54.7 million at Sotheby's, marking the highest price for any artwork by a woman at public auction.
#AuctionUpdate: Frida Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait ‘Diego y yo (Diego and I)’ soars to $34.9M, smashing the artist’s previous $8 million public auction record. This enigmatic work is Kahlo’s final ‘bust’ self-portrait completed before her death in 1954. pic.twitter.com/NVJZ3c8FOV
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) November 17, 2021
1945 Les Distractions de Dagobert by Carrington
2024 SOLD for $ 28.5M by Sotheby's
A natural rebel, the English born Leonora Carrington began her career with novels that appealed the Surrealists. She had an affair with Max Ernst and began painting. Aged 21 in 1938, Inn of the Dawn Horse is a self portrait with a hyena pet and a rocking horse with a background garden traveled by a white horse.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) by Leonora Carrington is widely regarded as her magnum opus and a pivotal masterpiece in her career. Painted in September 1945, shortly after she settled in Mexico City in 1943, this tempera on Masonite work marks the culmination of her artistic maturation during a transformative period.
Carrington, a British-born Surrealist who fled war-torn Europe, found creative freedom in Mexico among exiled Surrealists (such as Remedios Varo and Wolfgang Paalen) and Mexican modernists (including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). There, she rejected the "muse" role imposed by figures like André Breton and Max Ernst, developing a highly personal style infused with Celtic mythology, alchemy, the occult, and feminist themes. This painting represents the crowning achievement of that era, showcasing her at the height of her technical and imaginative powers—with intricate Bosch-like details, hybrid creatures, symbolic vignettes tied to the four elements, and luminous color.
It was a highlight of her acclaimed 1948 solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and has since featured in major shows, including the 2022 Venice Biennale-related exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection ("Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity"), where it was a thematic centerpiece.
The work's significance was dramatically underscored when it sold at Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on May 15, 2024 (lot 20) for $28.5 million (including fees), shattering Carrington's previous auction record of $3.3 million (set in 2022) and establishing a new benchmark for a British-born female artist. Acquired by Argentine collector Eduardo F. Costantini, it reflects the growing recognition of female Surrealists and Carrington's enduring influence on 20th-century art.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) by Leonora Carrington is widely regarded as her magnum opus and a pivotal masterpiece in her career. Painted in September 1945, shortly after she settled in Mexico City in 1943, this tempera on Masonite work marks the culmination of her artistic maturation during a transformative period.
Carrington, a British-born Surrealist who fled war-torn Europe, found creative freedom in Mexico among exiled Surrealists (such as Remedios Varo and Wolfgang Paalen) and Mexican modernists (including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). There, she rejected the "muse" role imposed by figures like André Breton and Max Ernst, developing a highly personal style infused with Celtic mythology, alchemy, the occult, and feminist themes. This painting represents the crowning achievement of that era, showcasing her at the height of her technical and imaginative powers—with intricate Bosch-like details, hybrid creatures, symbolic vignettes tied to the four elements, and luminous color.
It was a highlight of her acclaimed 1948 solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and has since featured in major shows, including the 2022 Venice Biennale-related exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection ("Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity"), where it was a thematic centerpiece.
The work's significance was dramatically underscored when it sold at Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on May 15, 2024 (lot 20) for $28.5 million (including fees), shattering Carrington's previous auction record of $3.3 million (set in 2022) and establishing a new benchmark for a British-born female artist. Acquired by Argentine collector Eduardo F. Costantini, it reflects the growing recognition of female Surrealists and Carrington's enduring influence on 20th-century art.
MITCHELL
1
1959 Untitled
2023 SOLD for $ 29M by Christie's
Joan Mitchell is one of the best figures of the second generation of abstract expressionism. She is inspired by the colors of nature in works that seem violent and impulsive but are in fact highly architected.
In two subsequent years, 1955 and 1956, she has her summer time in France. There she discovers that the bright colors of the countryside will be the best source for her inspiration, with limitless variations.
She joins the important Parisian artistic community and her style changes, renouncing to use a geometric grammar. The 'experiment' (in her own words) is so successful that she will move permanently in Paris in 1959.
The violence of the hand, the zigzags, the desire to express the nature through abstraction make her art close to Pollock's, but Mitchell's strong temperament does not necessarily accepts models. Unlike Pollock, she uses a wide brush to perform her long lines of bright and pure colors in an athletic movement that involves the full length of her body including standing on tiptoe. She confronts heavy impasto and translucent washes. The edges are left empty.
An untitled oil on canvas 248 x 220 cm was painted in the culmination of that phase ca 1959. Joan did not part from it. It was sold for $ 29M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 14 B.
This abstract painting is dominated by her favorite color, green, increasingly inspired by the French forests. The diversity and brilliance of the other colors anticipate her angers of the following years. The white background, which she considers necessary, provides the contrast.
Later in Paris, she will express a centrifugal violence, before her great come back to nature in Vétheuil in 1968.
In two subsequent years, 1955 and 1956, she has her summer time in France. There she discovers that the bright colors of the countryside will be the best source for her inspiration, with limitless variations.
She joins the important Parisian artistic community and her style changes, renouncing to use a geometric grammar. The 'experiment' (in her own words) is so successful that she will move permanently in Paris in 1959.
The violence of the hand, the zigzags, the desire to express the nature through abstraction make her art close to Pollock's, but Mitchell's strong temperament does not necessarily accepts models. Unlike Pollock, she uses a wide brush to perform her long lines of bright and pure colors in an athletic movement that involves the full length of her body including standing on tiptoe. She confronts heavy impasto and translucent washes. The edges are left empty.
An untitled oil on canvas 248 x 220 cm was painted in the culmination of that phase ca 1959. Joan did not part from it. It was sold for $ 29M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 14 B.
This abstract painting is dominated by her favorite color, green, increasingly inspired by the French forests. The diversity and brilliance of the other colors anticipate her angers of the following years. The white background, which she considers necessary, provides the contrast.
Later in Paris, she will express a centrifugal violence, before her great come back to nature in Vétheuil in 1968.
2
1990-1991 Sunflowers
2023 SOLD for $ 28M by Sotheby's
Joan Mitchell once stated : "All I wanted to do was paint". She never gave up.
She was first diagnosed with a cancer in 1984, aged 59. Her health further deteriorated with hip dysplasia and disabling arthritis.
Clearly feeling that her life and art would come to an end, she did not stop working, increasing her quest for the processing of colors by the greatest masters of the past : van Gogh, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse. She felt like a dying sunflower. She said : "I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist".
She restarted her former style of color bursts on white background, but without the desperate centrifugal explosion of her Paris period.
An Untitled diptych, oil on canvas 195 x 260 cm overall painted in 1989, was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 46.
The multi-colored abstract floating bouquet is well centered on the canvas without reaching the edges. Paint drippings provide some gravitation to the image.
The sunflowers dazzled Joan Mitchell throughout her career, with a culmination when she became aging and ailing.
A group of blossom heads fills in parallel both sides of a diptych painted in 1990-1991 on a white background. The expressive immersion provides a synthesis of Joan's skills. This oil on canvas in two parts 280 x 400 cm overall was sold for $ 28M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2023, lot 120.
A diptych 130 x 194 cm overall painted ca 1991 stages a flower bed of sunflowers from bloom to ground. It was sold for $ 6.1M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 33 B.
She was first diagnosed with a cancer in 1984, aged 59. Her health further deteriorated with hip dysplasia and disabling arthritis.
Clearly feeling that her life and art would come to an end, she did not stop working, increasing her quest for the processing of colors by the greatest masters of the past : van Gogh, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse. She felt like a dying sunflower. She said : "I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist".
She restarted her former style of color bursts on white background, but without the desperate centrifugal explosion of her Paris period.
An Untitled diptych, oil on canvas 195 x 260 cm overall painted in 1989, was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 46.
The multi-colored abstract floating bouquet is well centered on the canvas without reaching the edges. Paint drippings provide some gravitation to the image.
The sunflowers dazzled Joan Mitchell throughout her career, with a culmination when she became aging and ailing.
A group of blossom heads fills in parallel both sides of a diptych painted in 1990-1991 on a white background. The expressive immersion provides a synthesis of Joan's skills. This oil on canvas in two parts 280 x 400 cm overall was sold for $ 28M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2023, lot 120.
A diptych 130 x 194 cm overall painted ca 1991 stages a flower bed of sunflowers from bloom to ground. It was sold for $ 6.1M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 33 B.
Spider by BOURGEOIS
Intro
Louise Bourgeois desired to interpret her relationship with her own parents, generating a suffering that she appeased by her art at the borderline of sexual provocation. From 1951 to 1980 she tries a psychoanalysis. It is a failure : she considers that Freud does not propose anything for the artists.
She left many writings about her own art but it remains difficult to find the key. The relationship between sex and family, the position of the child within the family cell, are the highly traumatic guides to her creativity. Until 98 years old, she will be an activist in support to all the sexual minorities.
Within her old age, Louise Bourgeois remained hypersensitive to sexual ambiguity and sexual promiscuity. On October 15, 2015, Sotheby's sold for £ 1.2M a showcase realized in 2001 titled Mother and child, exhibiting a limp infant on the nude torso of a woman like some externalization of pregnancy. The carefully carved body of Bourgeois's spiders is a further female carnal symbol.
The world of a real spider is certainly of high complexity. It (she) is patient, steady in the center of her web which she builds and efficiently repairs after a destruction. The polygon of her eight legs offers a shelter for her loved ones, but she is also a fierce predator to the insects. Her small size makes her vulnerable but the artist will enlarge it to make her the towering star of a dehumanized parallel universe.
The spider is not a vertebrate and her behavioral psychology is inaccessible. The spider does not look like us, yet we share the planet with it. Good worker, it tirelessly endeavors to create its web. It disturbs us and has no face, and we interpret it as a threat. By choosing this beast as a symbol of motherhood, Louise Bourgeois is not an artist of animals but indeed a highly disturbing surrealist artist in the line of Wifredo Lam.
The spider symbolizes her own beloved nurturing mother. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size. Some of them have a dressed body, also recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
In 1994 she builds a small steel spider 28 cm high which carries marble eggs in a bag under its body. This sculpture, one of the first by Bourgeois on this theme, passed at Sotheby's on November 11, 2015.
In 1995, at the age of 84, she suddenly understands that the spider's maternal function will solve her fantasies. She sculpts new steel spiders and edits them in bronze, in various configurations : lowered body for climbing on the wall or raised on its tall thin legs.
The perimeter of the legs is the safety zone offered by the mother to her offspring. The comparison with the Lupa Capitolina suckling Romulus and Remus is relevant. The spiders of Louise Bourgeois personify her own mother, too frail but intensely protective.
The gigantic dimension of the sculptures, culminating in 1999 with a 10 m high Maman, solves this contradiction. Maman carries her eggs as in the original spider five years earlier.
She left many writings about her own art but it remains difficult to find the key. The relationship between sex and family, the position of the child within the family cell, are the highly traumatic guides to her creativity. Until 98 years old, she will be an activist in support to all the sexual minorities.
Within her old age, Louise Bourgeois remained hypersensitive to sexual ambiguity and sexual promiscuity. On October 15, 2015, Sotheby's sold for £ 1.2M a showcase realized in 2001 titled Mother and child, exhibiting a limp infant on the nude torso of a woman like some externalization of pregnancy. The carefully carved body of Bourgeois's spiders is a further female carnal symbol.
The world of a real spider is certainly of high complexity. It (she) is patient, steady in the center of her web which she builds and efficiently repairs after a destruction. The polygon of her eight legs offers a shelter for her loved ones, but she is also a fierce predator to the insects. Her small size makes her vulnerable but the artist will enlarge it to make her the towering star of a dehumanized parallel universe.
The spider is not a vertebrate and her behavioral psychology is inaccessible. The spider does not look like us, yet we share the planet with it. Good worker, it tirelessly endeavors to create its web. It disturbs us and has no face, and we interpret it as a threat. By choosing this beast as a symbol of motherhood, Louise Bourgeois is not an artist of animals but indeed a highly disturbing surrealist artist in the line of Wifredo Lam.
The spider symbolizes her own beloved nurturing mother. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size. Some of them have a dressed body, also recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
In 1994 she builds a small steel spider 28 cm high which carries marble eggs in a bag under its body. This sculpture, one of the first by Bourgeois on this theme, passed at Sotheby's on November 11, 2015.
In 1995, at the age of 84, she suddenly understands that the spider's maternal function will solve her fantasies. She sculpts new steel spiders and edits them in bronze, in various configurations : lowered body for climbing on the wall or raised on its tall thin legs.
The perimeter of the legs is the safety zone offered by the mother to her offspring. The comparison with the Lupa Capitolina suckling Romulus and Remus is relevant. The spiders of Louise Bourgeois personify her own mother, too frail but intensely protective.
The gigantic dimension of the sculptures, culminating in 1999 with a 10 m high Maman, solves this contradiction. Maman carries her eggs as in the original spider five years earlier.
1
1996
2023 SOLD for $ 33M by Sotheby's
Largest Bourgeois's spiders have a remarkable feature : this figurative sculpture can be viewed from inside by a tall standing person. He or she admires its graceful arches. An abstract precedent was with Calder's monumental stabiles.
A Spider 340 x 670 x 630 cm was cast in bronze in six copies. Its artist's proof is in steel. One of the eight leg's ends is curved as to catch a prey.
The number 1/6 was cast in January 1996. and immediately exhibited in a San Francisco gallery. It was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on May 18, 2023, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Apr 24, 2023
With chilling grandeur, Louise Bourgeois’ 1996 ‘Spider’—coming to auction for the first time in May at #SothbysNewYork—represents her singular contribution to the history of Modern art. Discover more: https://bit.ly/3L1Xp5m
A Spider 340 x 670 x 630 cm was cast in bronze in six copies. Its artist's proof is in steel. One of the eight leg's ends is curved as to catch a prey.
The number 1/6 was cast in January 1996. and immediately exhibited in a San Francisco gallery. It was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on May 18, 2023, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Apr 24, 2023
With chilling grandeur, Louise Bourgeois’ 1996 ‘Spider’—coming to auction for the first time in May at #SothbysNewYork—represents her singular contribution to the history of Modern art. Discover more: https://bit.ly/3L1Xp5m
- Sotheby's post promotes Louise Bourgeois' monumental 1996 bronze 'Spider' sculpture—symbolizing maternal protection and her mother's weaving legacy—for its first auction appearance, acquired that year by Fundação Itaú in São Paulo.
- The 10-foot-tall edition 1/6 sold for a record $32.8 million on May 18, 2023, at Sotheby's New York, surpassing estimates and boosting the contemporary sale to $167.5 million total.
- The video features abstract, shadowy spider imagery transitioning into "MOTHER, of all" text overlays, poetically capturing Bourgeois' exploration of resilience and familial bonds in modern art.
2
1997 3.26 m high 2/6
2019 SOLD for $ 32M by Christie's
A spider 3.26 m high on a 7.56 x 7.06 m overall perimeter designed in 1996 was sculpted in steel and cast in bronze in 1997 in six copies plus one artist's proof and one variant in bronze.
The 2/6 was sold for $ 32M from a lower is estimated $ 25M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 21 B.
Grok thought :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 16, 2019
Louise Bourgeois's 'Spider' realizes $32,055,000 at auction, setting a new #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist https://bit.ly/2JGa8MR
The 2/6 was sold for $ 32M from a lower is estimated $ 25M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 21 B.
Grok thought :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 16, 2019
Louise Bourgeois's 'Spider' realizes $32,055,000 at auction, setting a new #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist https://bit.ly/2JGa8MR
- Christie's 2019 post celebrates the $32 million sale of Louise Bourgeois's bronze sculpture "Spider" (1997), a 10-foot-tall work from her iconic arachnid series symbolizing maternal protection and psychological tension, which set an auction record for the artist at the time.
- The sculpture, one of several casts from an edition, features elongated bronze legs and a clustered body evoking vulnerability, drawing from Bourgeois's personal history as explored in her confessional feminist art.
- This record was surpassed in 2023 when another "Spider" cast sold for $32.8 million at Sotheby's, highlighting the enduring market demand for Bourgeois's late-career sculptures amid rising values for women artists.
3
1997 3.26 m high 3/6
2015 SOLD for $ 28M by Christie's
On November 10, 2015, Christie's, sold for $ 28M the bronze 3/6 of the large variant 7.56 x 7.06 x 3.26 m, executed in 1997, lot 10B.
Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
Grok thought :
Quote Christie's @ChristiesInc Nov 11, 2015
Louise Bourgeois' Spider just sold for $28,165,000, a #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist.
Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
Grok thought :
Quote Christie's @ChristiesInc Nov 11, 2015
Louise Bourgeois' Spider just sold for $28,165,000, a #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist.
- Christie's announced the sale of Louise Bourgeois' monumental bronze sculpture "Spider" for $28.2 million at its 2015 Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale, shattering the artist's prior auction record of $10.7 million by over 160%.
- The 1996 cast, one of eight editions, towers nearly 30 feet high and symbolizes maternal protection in Bourgeois' oeuvre, drawing from her Freudian explorations of family trauma and femininity.
- Despite exceeding estimates of $25-35 million, the overall auction totaled $266 million—below the $316 million pre-sale projection—highlighting a softer market for postwar art that evening.
