Leonora Carrington's 'Fil d'Or' Surfaces at Auction After 70 Years

A Leonora Carrington painting that has spent seven decades out of public view will come to auction on November 10 at Heritage Auctions in New York. Fil d'Or (1953) carries an estimate of $250,000–$350,000 — a modest figure against the artist's $28.5 million auction record, set just last year.

The painting's title translates from the French as "gold thread," a term traditionally describing the delicate metal wire used to ornament luxury textiles. The cosmic bird Carrington depicts appears composed of intersecting threads, all emanating from a single source: a golden galaxy pulsing in place of a heart.

How was the painting made?

Carrington used a technique developed by her former partner, Max Ernst, known as grattage: 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.

Heritage Auctions' catalog citation leans on the work's title as an interpretive key. "By choosing this title, Leonora Carrington shifts focus away from the obvious," the house wrote. "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."

The citation adds: "Ultimately, Fil d'Or demonstrates that words hold multiple meanings, explores how others perceive them, and questions whether they are truly understood at all."

That is a strong claim for a mid-range lot. Whether the market agrees will show in the bidding.

Where did the work come from?

Carrington painted Fil d'Or in Mexico, where she fled after the outbreak of World War II in Europe. There she formed a swift friendship with fellow refugees — the Surrealist painter Remedios Varo and the photographer Kati Horna — bonded over alchemy, the occult and esoteric symbolism. Carrington died in Mexico City in 2011, at 94.

Neither Heritage nor the source material specifies where the painting has hung for the past 70 years, who consigned it, or how its authenticity and provenance were established. Those details will shape how seriously bidders treat the estimate.

What does this change for the market?

Female Surrealists have seen an unprecedented surge in market interest over the past decade, driven in part by Cecilia Alemani's 2022 Venice Biennale, titled after Carrington's book The Milk of Dreams. The peak came in 2024, when Carrington's 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert sold at Sotheby's for $28.5 million, shattering her previous auction record of $3.2 million, set in 2022.

Against that backdrop, Fil d'Or reads as a test case: a freshly resurfaced work by a record-setting artist, priced at roughly one percent of her high-water mark. If bidding runs past the estimate, it will confirm that Carrington's market has depth beyond the headline lots. If it stalls, the gap between her peak and the middle market will be the story.