By Erika Bucio
The painter Sofía Bassi (1913-1998) drew inspiration from surrealist aesthetics, fairy tales, science fiction films, and fashion photography to create her own visual universe. Author of more than 860 works, though the whereabouts of many are unknown, she has spent decades awaiting recognition for her work.
The exhibition The Universe of Sofia Bassi, at the Georgina Pounds Gallery (Álvaro Obregón 99, Rome), is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to date to present and relaunch her work.
Bassi, born Sofia Celorio, did not begin to paint until she was 51. It was her second husband, the Italian businessman Franco Bassi, from whom she took her surname, who gave her the materials one Christmas, convinced that it was she and not her daughter Claire, whom Sofia insisted on sending to academies, who had the real talent.
"Once she was given the paintbrush, she never let go of it for 30 years," recalls Tere Trouyet, daughter-in-law and guardian of the artist's legacy through the Sofia Bassi Foundation, which she manages together with her granddaughter Millie.
Almost entirely self-taught, when she tried to attend an academy, the director refused to give her classes. He told her: "You have a freshness and spontaneity that I'm going to ruin. You're already an artist, madam. Start painting."
In 1965 she held her first exhibition at the Galería de la Plástica Mexicana with 45 oil paintings. She sold them all.
But just three years later her world took a turn: on January 3, 1968, she entered prison in Acapulco after pleading guilty to the murder of her son-in-law, the Italian Count Cesare d'Acquarone, in an incident that remains, to this day, shrouded in uncertainty.
"She said it was a regrettable accident, and we have remained at the bottom of that regrettable accident, respecting her wishes," Trouyet responded in an interview.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but only served part of it. However, the media and social scandal was enormous. The Italian writer and journalist Giorgio Scerbanenco even published a novel inspired by the case: Le principesse di Acapulco (The Princesses of Acapulco).
While in prison, she had the privilege of continuing to paint. She produced more than 250 works, all signed with the initials ELC: "In prison."
As for her painting, her palette changed. It became darker and more dramatic, with earth tones and browns that were not present in her earlier works. "It's a departure from fairy tales," Trouyet observes: "It's much darker." Eclosión (1968) belongs to that period, where the egg alluding to rebirth appears for the first time, and from then on it is fully integrated into her personal mythology.
"The maidens and fairies give way to an ethereal entity, with a ghostly and grotesque appearance," describes Daniel Garza Usabiaga in the introductory essay to Sofía Bassi: Portals to Other Worlds, written by Trouyet and published by the foundation.
These ghostly figures appear, for example, in Brief Judgment (1970), as spectators of a hanging. She also includes the figure of Don Quixote, which, according to the art critic, functions as a tribute to those who believed in and defended her innocence. In The Quixote (1969), she portrayed herself victorious, as a survivor of a fire. However, she maintained her fascination with science fiction and space.
As a tribute to the arrival of man on the Moon in 1969, which she was able to watch on television in his cell, she painted Space Voyage, which according to Trouyet, arrived through an acquaintance at NASA in Houston and was then transferred by the agency to the Smithsonian.
Shortly after being imprisoned, she painted The Calumny, part of a mural collaboration with Alberto Gironella (The Torture) and José Luis Cuevas (Justice), to which Rafael Coronel (The Cage) and Francisco Corzas (The Painter Protecting His Model) later joined, in safekeeping at the Municipal Palace of Acapulco.
The changes made to his painting during her time in prison remained even after she regained her freedom and until her death in 1998.
The Universe of Sofia Bassi displays paintings from her time in prison alongside later work, and also presents the most unique piece of her entire production: the Ovosarcophagus (1988-1998), an egg-shaped coffin made of fiberglass that she had built as a personal spaceship and which she spent 10 years painting inside.
"She would say, 'How awful to end up in a box. How I would love a spaceship, and that spaceship would be an egg,'" her daughter-in-law recounts.
And indeed, she lay in state for a few hours inside the egg-shaped sarcophagus before being cremated, as was her wish.
Inside it has a seat, a seatbelt and is painted down to the last corner. Pounds, the gallery owner, says that during the opening of the exhibition this Thursday, it will be open every hour, just for a moment. "It's so personal," she explains. "Almost as if her body or spirit were inside. I think she inhabits it."
Garza Usabiaga writes that, despite having started her career exhibiting at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), Bassi's relationship with "the Art Institution in Mexico became distant," and although it did not affect her development and commercial success, it did impact her dissemination and study.
For Pounds, exhibiting her work now comes at a time of renewed recognition for women in the arts. It also means boosting the artist's international visibility.
"Not enough people outside know Sofía Bassi. Not enough museums collect her work," the gallery owner argues.
She has already succeeded in having the FAMM museum (Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins), in France, acquire four of her paintings, and is in talks with institutions in Europe, England and China.
The problem of tracing the work is enormous. She didn't work with galleries: she sold directly; someone would come and take a painting. An extraordinary case was the 1965 exhibition at the Galería de la Plástica Mexicana.
Trouyet and Pounds hope the exhibition will help locate the majority of the works, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. In particular, they are looking for a 1966 self-portrait the artist painted for a group exhibition at the MAM, documented in the book Sofía Bassi: Portals to Other Worlds, but whose trail was lost when it was auctioned by Morton.
"Right now, works have appeared in California (...) They are grandchildren who have appeared, whose parents bought the paintings and have already died," says Trouyet, painted by her mother-in-law in several paintings, as well as other members of her family, especially Claire, the widow of the Italian nobleman for whose death she was imprisoned.
