The Essential Guide to Surrealism's Chloé: Literature, Carrington's Art, and Cultural Impact

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For decades, major art institutions classified women surrealists as eccentric appendices to men. Carrington was "Max Ernst’s companion"; Varo was filed away as a local Mexican phenomenon; Unica Zürn was framed solely through Hans Bellmer. Over the past decade, that hierarchy collapsed entirely.

In 2015, Aridjis co-curated the landmark Leonora Carrington retrospective at Tate Liverpool, pulling institutional attention toward Carrington's late, intricate work. The market followed with equal force. In May 2024, Carrington's 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert sold at Sotheby’s for $28.5 million, smashing auction estimates and outstripping auction records for Ernst and Salvador Dalí. Curators from New York to Mexico City now treat the mid-century Latin American diaspora as surrealism's most fertile, inventive era, vindicating Aridjis's lifelong critical focus.