Cosmic Leonora Carrington Painting Reemerges at Auction After 70 Years

In a dreamy development for the fall auction season, another Surrealist standout has resurfaced on the market. After seven decades out of public view, Leonora Carrington’s Fil d’Or (1953) will appear at Heritage Auctions in New York on November 10, with an estimate of $250,000–$350,000.

Its title translates from the French to “gold thread,” a term traditionally referring to the delicate metal wire used to ornament luxury textiles. The cosmic bird Carrington depicts appears to be composed of intersecting threads, all emanating from a single source: the golden galaxy pulsing in place of a heart.

She employed a technique developed by her former partner, the artist Max Ernst, known as grattage, in which layers of fresh paint are scraped with a blade or spatula. The process exposes unexpected shapes and patterns through texture, creating an impression of spontaneous motion, as though the picture were realizing itself.

“By choosing this title, Leonora Carrington shifts focus away from the obvious. Instead, she redirects the viewer’s awareness to consider coexisting, alternative meanings—in this case, her meaning—by experimenting with how we emotionally respond to different thoughts,” Heritage Auctions wrote in its citation. “Ultimately, Fil d’Or demonstrates that words hold multiple meanings, explores how others perceive them, and questions whether they are truly understood at all.”

Carrington created Fil d’Or in Mexico, to which she fled after the outbreak of World War II in Europe. There, she formed a swift friendship with fellow refugees, including the Surrealist painter Remedios Varos and photographer Kati Horna, over alchemy, the occult, and esoteric symbolism.

Carrington died in Mexico City in 2011, at the age of 94. Although she achieved success in her lifetime as both a visual artist and a writer, female Surrealists have experienced an unprecedented surge in market interest over the past decade, thanks in part to Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 Venice Biennale, titled after Carrington’s book The Milk of Dreams. The market reached a high point in 2024, when Carrington’s 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert sold for $28.5 million at Sotheby’s, setting an auction record for the artist. The sale easily surpassed her previous auction record of $3.2 million, set in 2022.