The results were led by Monet's 'Meules à Giverny' and Leonora Carrington's record-breaking 'Les Distractions de Dagobert'
...Surrealism played a starring role in the evening action, especially thanks to works by women artists. This was best evidenced by Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert. Painted in tempera on Masonite, the hallucinatory, dreamlike work fetched a record $24.5m ($28.5m with fees), more than double its $12m low estimate.
Eduardo F. Constantini, the founder of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba), won the lot by outdueling a plethora of telephone underbidders from his seat near the front of the salesroom. After the hammer came down, the room erupted in gleeful applause.
First exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1948, the minutely detailed painting bears imagery that floats between the occult and the mists of ancient myths. It last sold at Sotheby’s in New York in November 1995—but in a Latin American Art auction for a then-estimate-busting $475,000 with fees, showing just how much times have changed.
“I was the underbidder 30 years ago when it last sold here,” Constantini told The Art Newspaper as he exited the salesroom. It goes to show that collecting can be a long and winding journey.
A second Carrington painting, titled Who art thou, White Face? (1959) and featuring a winged and horned horse creature, brought a within-estimate $2m ($2.5m with fees). Three lots earlier, Remedios Varo’s startling 1960 composition Esquiador (Viajero), populated by a pair of encapsulated owls guarding a fur-coated figure in a snow-dusted forest, more than doubled its $1.5m high expectation, rising to $3.4m ($4.2m with fees).
Rounding out the offerings of work by women Surrealists, Leonor Fini’s ghostly composition Le Train (1975)—centred on two seated female rail passengers in profile, each attired in chiffon dresses—brought $350,000 ($444,500 with fees) after a chase by four bidders that surpassed the high estimate. The painting last sold at Tajan Paris in March 2013 for €75,000 with fees.