Author name: Kaat Van Der Linden

Gallerist Georgina Pound Honors Mexico’s Surrealist Female Artists text and photography Sanna Fried Mexico City Art Week 2026 was a beautiful and eventful journey of art, parties, earthquakes, and bad phone service.  Much to my delight, this year turned out to be the year of the figurative painters, with women leading the way. It was also the year to celebrate the female historical surrealist painters of Mexico City, notably Leonora Carrington, whose work I saw presented in no fewer than six galleries throughout the week.  A woman who has also been shaped by this wave of female painters sweeping across Mexico is the British gallerist Georgina Pounds. For her, the female surrealist artists, with Leonora Carrington at the forefront, have become a source of inspiration that she has carried forward and developed into a contemporary gallery rooted in Mexico’s cultural past. One of my highlights from Mexico City Art Week was meeting the ever-so-inspiring and energetic Georgina Pounds.  Mexico City is in a moment of transformation, yet Roma Norte, the area where Georgina Pound Gallery is located, continues to hold a quiet connection to its past. The Colonia’s architecture is evolving and adapting to new uses and rhythms, but when we look closely, it remains grounded in a city shaped as much by memory as by development.  When Pounds was given the opportunity to open a gallery at Casa Lamm, a large and beautiful historic building, built in 1911 as a private palace, she knew it was the right time. She had been dreaming of a project that was personal and aligned with her own history.  She decided to keep the rooms’ original names:  Frida Kahlo, Nahui Ollin, Marguerite Yourcenar and Luis Cernuda, each carrying their own symbolic presence into the new gallery. Pound also preserved the building’s original 1911 features: high ceilings, moulded detailing, and herringbone wooden floors, and in many ways, its usage and artist memory. Casa Lamm is a remarkable building, rich with history and culture. For decades, it functioned as a cultural centre, housing a library, classrooms, and a restaurant. It is said that this restaurant was a favourite of the artist Leonora Carrington.  Pounds holds a deep admiration for the women surrealist painters who lived and worked in Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. Pounds explains that the story of Leonora’s favourite restaurant being inside Casa Lamm became a meaningful and symbolic sign for Georgina to take the leap and establish her own space right there, where Carrington had her beloved meals.  During the first half of the 20th century, Mexico City became a creative hub and a sanctuary where many women felt free. Pounds sees clear parallels between the artistic circles that gathered in Mexico at that time and today’s new wave of artists and cultural practitioners. For her, women surrealists like Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, and the support they offered one another remain a key source of inspiration.  Pounds believes there are clear parallels in the connections she sees between the artistic circles that gathered in Mexico during that time and the new wave of artists and cultural practitioners from Europe and America arriving in Mexico City today. Her vision for the gallery at Casa Lamm is to reflect that same spirit of openness and artistic community, as well as to echo the building’s past as a cultural centre. She wants the gallery to be a living, welcoming space filled with movement, gatherings, and events, such as the free guided meditation she organised on International Women’s Day.   Before moving to Mexico City, eight years ago, Pounds studied architecture at The Cass in London. She believes that having an eye for architecture is imperative in Mexico City, a city where it blends seamlessly and constantly with the visual arts. The gallery’s first show at Casa Lamm, featuring British painter Vanessa Raw, solidified this idea, with Raw’s romantic and classic work speaking intimately with the architecture of the space. Spanning three rooms, Raw’s large-scale oil paintings featuring landscapes, animal or female nudes are a blend of Greek mythology, Mexican traditions and the natural world, oozing poetry, sensuality and vulnerability. Simultaneously, Casa Lamm is hosting another show, which brings together works by young painters and sculptors from Europe and Mexico, such as María Kalach, Fredrik Nystrup Larsen and Tali Lennox, with artists connected to the historical surrealist movement in Mexico City. Especially touching, Kati Horna’s photography features Carrington and serves as a reminder of the importance of sisterhood and friendship between artists. “I grew up in Sussex, in the same village where the poet and surrealist patron sir Edward James grew up”  Pounds explains with pride in her voice. James specifically supported one artist… guess who- Leonora Carrington. Perhaps it is because of Georgina’s upbringing that she has developed such a strong, lifelong connection to surrealism. Georgina’s love for Carrington’s work, an interest cultivated throughout her upbringing, became the catalyst for discovering another important figure of the Surrealist movement – Sofia Bassi. Bassi, unlike many of the artists in Mexico City’s Surrealist movement, was Mexican. Her paintings carry many layers and a sense of darkness, with many of them being produced while she was imprisoned, after being convicted of murdering her daughter’s husband.  Sofía Bassi and Kati Horna were close friends, and now in April, Georgina Pound Gallery will present works by both artists. The show will bring together voices, histories, and relationships of women who shaped Mexico’s Surrealist movement and today’s art scene.  In many ways, Georgina Pound Gallery feels like part of a larger moment in Mexico City, where history, identity, and new artistic voices are being woven together. In a city constantly shifting between past and future, Pound seems to move effortlessly between both. Her gallery is not just a space for art, but a continuation of something that has always existed here – a quiet thread of connection between artists, histories, and women who found their freedom in Mexico City. Looking back at a