Art Basel Miami Beach: Booth F8

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, Richard Saltoun presents a group display centered around three pioneering Latin American artists: Elizam ESCOBAR (1948–2021, Puerto Rican), Cossette ZENO (b. 1930, Dominican / Puerto Rican) and Olga DE AMARAL (b. 1932, Colombian). This marks the first-ever art fair presentations of Puerto Rican artists: Elizam Escobar, whose pioneering political works, made while imprisoned in the United States, use the human figure to critique colonialism and power, and Cossette Zeno, a 95-year-old post-war Surrealist artist, whose erotic, psychological paintings took the Parisian art world by storm in the 1950s. 

Elizam Escobar, whose work was recently acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, was imprisoned in 1980 and sentenced to 68 years; despite this, he continued to paint, creating psychologically revealing paintings depicting his inner turmoil and developing his concept of "art as an act of liberation". His paintings confront existential and political themes, questioning the boundaries of personal and collective freedom.  

Cossette Zeno, described by the famed exiled artist Eugenio Granell, as making 'scorching inventions', produced biomorphic and proto-feminist works exploring space and the human and feminine in the surreal. Recently included in Surrealism Beyond Borders at the Tate and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Surrealism and Us at The Modern Art Museum (The Modern), Fort Worth, Texas (2024), her work is currently being reappraised within the wider Surrealist movement.

Colombian artist Olga de Amaral's textile-based sculptures draw from her cultural heritage, evoking sacred spaces reminiscent of churches from her homeland and Byzantine mosaics. Possessing a spiritual and meditative quality, her experimental fiber works explore memory, materiality, and the texture of time. This presentation follows de Amaral's inclusion in the 2024 Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere; and her major retrospective at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris, which later travelled to the ICA Miami, concluding this October 2025. 

Bringing together these three artists, this display examines cultural heritage, memory, resistance, and freedom through Surrealist and tactile material languages. Together, their practices reflect a shared interest in defining personal and collective identity, exploring the terrain between history, authority and homeland. 

These artists will be accompanied by works from Peter COLLINGWOOD (1922–2008), Fathi HASSAN (b. 1957) and Harold STEVENSON (1929–2018). 

Miami Beach Convention Center

1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139

PRIVATE DAYS (invitation only)

Wednesday 3 December 2025

First Choice | 11am – 7pm 

Preview | 4pm – 7pm 

Thursday 4 December 2025

First Choice and Preview | 11am – 7pm 

Vernissage | 4pm – 7pm 

PUBLIC DAYS 11am – 6pm

Friday 5 December 2025

Saturday 6 December 2025

Sunday 7 December 2025

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