Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to represent the Estate of Sarah Grilo (1917-2007). Represented by the Paris location of the gallery since 2018, the Estate of Sarah Grilo’s relationship with the gallery will now extend to Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. An exceptional example of the artist’s work will be on view at the gallery’s booth at Art Basel: Miami Beach. The artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, Sarah Grilo: The New York Years 1962-70 will open in February 2024 through mid March, curated by art historian Karen Grimson, with works by the artist concurrently presented at Frieze Los Angeles.

In a career spanning three continents and six decades, Sarah Grilo created paintings and works on paper in a distinctive style fusing abstraction with language. The gallery's upcoming exhibition will focus on the artist’s pivotal years in New York at a time of cultural and visual experimentation and political upheaval in the United States. The works on view will highlight Grilo’s innovative assimilation of language and text in her paintings, influenced in part by her introduction and attraction to U.S. illustrated publications such as LIFE and women’s magazines. Of this period, Grimson writes: "A galvanizing moment for Grilo’s practice, the New York years span her transition from modern to contemporary abstraction. As formal and chromatic explorations gave way to the emergence of discourse and language, Grilo’s engagement with politics and mass media became fundamental in her contribution to post-war American painting.”

Mateo Fernández-Muro, the grandson of Sarah Grilo, says, "we are honored to start collaborating with Galerie Lelong & Co. in New York, a city of such a pivotal importance in Sarah Grilo's extensive oeuvre. We are grateful that this endorsement will help immensely to impulse the legacy of her extraordinary life and work, from now on surrounded by the impressive roster of artists the gallery has been promoting for more than thirty years."

Mary Sabbatino, Vice President/Partner at Galerie Lelong & Co., says, “we are proud to continue our commitment to the representation of women artists and in particular those from Latin America with the representation of the Estate of Sarah Grilo. With upcoming programming contextualizing Grilo’s years in New York, we continue our history of supporting important women artists with an aim of expanding the canon to include their achievements, that have often been overlooked.”

Sarah Grilo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1917. In 1952, Grilo joined the Grupo de Artistas Modernos de la Argentina assembled by Aldo Pellegrini, which included the artists Enio Iommi, Tomás Maldonado, Alfredo Hlito, Lidy Prati, José Antonio Fernández-Muro, among others. Forming a loose collective, these artists worked both as individuals and on joint projects with prints, artists’ books and textiles. Grilo’s receipt of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961 prompted her move to New York the following year together with her husband, the artist José Antonio Fernández-Muro, and their two children. In New York, Grilo and Fernández-Muro were key figures in an expatriate circle of artists from Argentina that expanded to include many artists and cultural figures in New York including Leo Castelli and Chryssa.

In 1970, partly in opposition to the draft for the United States’s involvement in the war in Vietnam, Grilo and her family moved to the south of Spain where she continued her approach of gestural abstraction and text. Grilo remained in Europe until her death in 2007.

In her lifetime, Grilo exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and her work has been collected by numerous institutions, including MoMA, New York; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her paintings have been included in recent museum shows including Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction at MoMA, New York (2017) and Action, Gesture, Paint | Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70 at Whitechapel Gallery in London (2022).