Pippy Houldsworth Gallery presents Floating Between Earth and Sky, the first European solo exhibition of Mexican Surrealist painter Sofía Bassi. A contemporary of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, Bassi's work has been underappreciated outside of her native country. The exhibition brings together paintings, works on paper, and a painted ostrich egg - one of just six examples made by Bassi, and the first time that this part of her practice has been publicly presented. At the centre of the exhibition is the rare and exceptional altarpiece, Caja del tiempo (1970), an iconic example of the artist's contribution to Surrealism.
Interested in esoteric knowledge and a personal spiritual iconography, Bassi's paintings exist as windows onto memory, mythology, fear, desire and the vast territories of the subconscious. Flying spirits and castles reside in dreamscapes of fantastical swirling mountain ranges, deserts or seascapes. The motif of the egg holds particular resonance in her practice as a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Bassi saw imagination as a form of freedom: 'My paintings are portals to other worlds that we can inhabit.