Leonora Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945), a landmark painting by the celebrated British Mexican Surrealist, is set to be auctioned at Sotheby’s modern evening auction in New York on May 15th. The painting, anticipated to fetch between $12 million and $18 million, is likely to set a new auction record for Carrington. The low estimate is nearly quadruple the artist’s current auction record of $3.3 million, set by The Garden of Paracelsus (1957) at Sotheby’s in May 2022.
This sale marks the first time the work will hit the market in 30 years while also coinciding with the 100th anniversary of André Breton’s movement-defining Surrealist Manifesto. Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted two years after Carrington arrived in Mexico City from Europe, emerged during a prolific period of her career as she mingled with other Surrealist émigrés, including Breton, and leading Mexican artists like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
“Les Distractions de Dagobert is the definitive masterpiece of Leonora Carrington’s long and storied career, bearing all the hallmarks of the artist at her absolute height,” said Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and Modern art in New York. “The painting pioneers the visionary style that we associate with surrealism today while equally evocative of Hieronymus Bosch’s anarchic tableaus, bridging artistic boundaries to achieve an entirely new language. Like Carrington herself, the painting defies easy categorization, existing on an astral plane of its own unique being.”
This painting symbolizes the most dynamic period of Carrington’s career, which has recently garnered increased interest from collectors worldwide. Once overshadowed by their male counterparts, women in the Surrealist movement, including Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Leonor Fini, have been featured in several major exhibitions, such as “Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2022.
Les Distractions de Dagobert will be displayed in Los Angeles from April 17th to 19th before moving to New York on May 3rd, ahead of the auction.
