Among the most distinguished private collections of Surrealist art, Exquisite Corpus represents the culmination of a lifetime’s engagement with one of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary artistic movements.
Assembled over four decades with a connoisseurial eye and unwavering dedication, the collection traces the movement’s imaginative arc—from its seminal figures to lesser-known, yet equally compelling contributors.
At the center of the collection is Frida Kahlo’s psychologically charged El sueño (La cama)—an intimate meditation on identity and mortality—joined by the pioneering visions of Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Remedios Varo and Valentine Hugo, artists whose work expanded Surrealism’s expressive range and gave form to its most personal and visionary dimensions. In Exquisite Corpus, these voices exist in dialogue with the defining architects of the movement—Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy—evincing the transatlantic exchanges that shaped Surrealism’s evolution from Paris to New York and beyond.
Recalling the collaborative Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, in which artists’ successive sketches coalesced into unexpected and fantastical forms, Exquisite Corpus achieves a cohesion that transcends the sum of its interwoven parts. Rarely seen and long preserved in private hands, the collection stands as a testament to Surrealism’s enduring capacity to challenge perception and provoke critical reflection, and affirms its profound relevance in the modern era.
Main Image: Frida Kahlo, El sueño (La cama) (1940). Courtesy Sotheby's.