Exhibition preview·London
Forgotten Women Surrealists Fetch New Records as Dealers Revive Bassi, Snead and Zeno
Dealers are rebuilding the market for overlooked women Surrealists: Sofía Bassi's auction record doubled its estimate in May, her Frieze London debut drew strong interest, and works by Stella Snead, Marie Wilson and 96-year-old Cossette Zeno are finding museum and collector buyers.
Surrealism's quiet reassessment is turning into a market story. Dealers in London and New York are reviving the work of women artists long overlooked by the movement's history, and buyers are starting to pay attention. Mexican painter Sofía Bassi was one of the surprises of Frieze London last month, when an untitled 1969 canvas appeared on Pippy Houldsworth's stand priced at $85,000. Bassi once showed alongside Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo, yet her reputation faded until her family rebuilt her archive.
That recovery has been fragile. Her daughter-in-law Tere Trouyet revisited the archive in 2021 and wrote an account of Bassi's life and practice, and a foundation followed two years later, after learning Bassi's youngest son had been selling her paintings and had allegedly hired a forger to make fakes for a local auction house. In May, Mexico's Morton auction house set her record at $46,128, more than double the high estimate. Houldsworth's London show, running through November 14, has drawn what the dealer called surprising interest, with prices from $20,000 to $400,000 and one work on hold for a private European museum.
Other estates are following a similar path. Stella Snead, whose work will be shown at Paris Photo next week, left her estate to friends, and since Richard Saltoun Gallery became involved in 2025 her work has entered the collections of MoMA, London's National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland. Gallery Wendi Norris, which first showed Carrington in 2008, now has sole access to a small body of work by American Surrealist Marie Wilson, shown at Independent 20th Century in New York in September.
Cossette Zeno, now 96, appeared in Tate Modern's 2022 survey Surrealism Beyond Borders, but serious attention only arrived after Saltoun debuted her work at Art Basel Miami Beach last year. Buyers in Britain and the United States, including two institutions, bought works priced between $6,000 and $98,000 at the gallery's recent New York show. Dealers say demand is still growing, and the best revivals pair careful research with a long view rather than quick speculation.
