Latin American Surrealism has its roots in the 1940s, when many European artists fled to Mexico to escape fascism. André Breton, a French founder of Surrealism, hailed Mexico as "the Surrealist place par excellence". A magical mentality has long been embedded in indigenous Mexican culture, exemplified by the sugar-coated confectionery skulls given to children for the Day of the Dead.
In 1956 the painter Diego Rivera stated that three of the world's most important female artists lived in Mexico: Remedios Varo of Spain, Leonora Carrington of England and Alice Rahon of France—all European émigrée Surrealists. Where they had been peripheral in Paris, perhaps crowded out by male peers, in Mexico they rose to become major artists.
Between 2017 and 2023 total sales of works by the eight major female Surrealists increased in value by an average of 150% every year, according to ArtTactic, a London-based arts consultancy. In 2024 sales jumped by 159%, mainly thanks to Carrington and Varo (together up 490%), even as the global art market fell by 27%. Argentine collector Eduardo Costantini paid $28.5m for Carrington's "Les Distractions de Dagobert", coming close to Salvador Dalí's top price. In May 2025 Christie's in New York auctioned Varo's "Revelation" for $6.22m, a record for the artist.
Costantini founded the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires. In 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York put on an exhibition which expanded Surrealism's canon beyond western Europe, including pieces by Carrington, Varo and Rahon.
Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.