Rediscovered Leonora Carrington Painting Leads Heritage Auctions’ November Sale
A painting by Leonora Carrington, unseen on the market for more than seven decades, will lead Heritage Auctions’ Modern & Contemporary Art Signature Auction on November 10.
The work, Fil d’Or (1953), was acquired from Mexico City’s Galeria de Arte Mexicano the year it was painted and has remained in the same family ever since.
Carrington created the intimate canvas using grattage, scraping through layers of paint to reveal underlying patterns. From that textured surface emerges an enigmatic, long-tailed personage confronting the viewer. Its title, French for “gold thread,” offers an entry into Carrington’s private language of transformation and hidden meanings. Few examples of her work employing this Surrealist technique have appeared at auction.
“Discoveries like this allow us to encounter a familiar artist from a fresh perspective,” says Frank Hettig, Heritage’s Vice President of Contemporary Art. “The Carrington has spent more than seven decades in one family, and its small scale holds an extraordinary imaginative world. Together with the rediscovered Whanki paintings, it gives this auction a particularly compelling sense of discovery.”