The Universe of Sofia Bassi

The Universe of Sofía Bassi brings together over 40 paintings and drawings by the Surrealist Mexican painter Sofía Bassi. Presented in the historic 1911 gallery space of Georgina Pounds Gallery in Roma Norte, Mexico City, the exhibition is the largest presentation of Bassi’s work to date. On view for the first ever time is the portal El Ovosarcófago (The Ovosarcophagus), 1988–1998, within which Bassi spent ten years painting a never-ending universe of stars. “My paintings are portals to other worlds that we can inhabit. Careful observation and meditation of my work will take you to those worlds. Each painting is a spaceship…the Ovosarcófago is the master ship of my personal adventure.” 

 

Bassi’s paintings transport viewers into her deeply personal universe of dreamlike landscapes, symbolic creatures, and mythological presences. Her works evoke magical interior worlds where fairies, forest spirits, sea goddesses, and enigmatic figures inhabit enchanted environments. Castles, forests, and stormy seas appear as places of imagination and storytelling suspended somewhere between dream and nightmare. Again and again Bassi returns to themes of the subconscious, spiritual metamorphosis, and the fragile threshold between life and death. Within these symbolic worlds, her daughter Claire appears as a recurring figure, at once muse, witness, and companion, like a quiet thread of intimacy and devotion.

 

On January 3, 1968, Bassi pleaded guilty to the murder of her son-in-law in an incident that remains veiled in uncertainty. Sentenced to ten years in prison in Acapulco, she produced more than 250 works, all signed “ELC” (En La Cárcel), meaning “in jail.” Here hr inner world remained unbroken, her imagination moving freely where she could not.

 

The Universe of Sofía Bassi invites viewers to enter the artist’s singular cosmos, where myth, nature and personal mythology merge into illustrated worlds. To discontinue the memory of Sofía Bassi and her world would be to forget a singular force of her time: Portales a Otros Mundos opens with a deeply personal message from Tere Touyet addressed to Sofía Bassi: “I want to give you in return for everything that you gave me during your life. Thank you very much my dear Sofía.”