Cossette ZENO Puerto Rican, b. 1930
Let's Go Higher, 1952
Oil on canvas
58.4 x 45.7 cm
23 x 18 in
23 x 18 in
Cossette ZENO (b. 1930) was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, but grew up in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her early artistic work, influenced by her mentor Eugenio Fernández...
Cossette ZENO (b. 1930) was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, but grew up in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Her early artistic work, influenced by her mentor Eugenio Fernández Granell at the University of Puerto Rico, challenged
academic norms. Granell, an exiled Spanish Surrealist, described Zeno’s proto-feminist, biomorphic abstractions as
‘scorching inventions’ that acted ‘on the world of visual representations like a magical blowtorch.’ In 1953, Zeno earned
a scholarship to study in Paris and quickly joined the Surrealist group upon her arrival in September 1953. During this
period, Zeno began producing metaphysical, biomorphic, and proto-feminist works that explore space, identity, and
the role of the human and feminine in the surreal.
While attending the École du Louvre, her evenings were spent at the Café de la Place Blanche, the Surrealists’ central
meeting spot. She was enthusiastically received and Breton personally invited her to his home to meet his family and
introduced her to the Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim, initiating a significant and fruitful friendship. In July 1954, Zeno
exhibited her work at L’Étoile Scellée, a major Surrealist center in Paris, alongside canonical figures. Her emblematic
piece from this period, Dreams Suspended in the Desert (1954), was widely praised for its sensual line and the influence
of psychic automatism.
The declining health of Zeno’s father compelled her return to the Americas in December 1954, leading to subsequent
moves from Cuba to New York due to political instability. The critical re-discovery of Zeno’s oeuvre confirms her
important place in Surrealist history. Her first major retrospective, Cossette Zeno: Antología, 1951-2014, was held
in 2015 at the Museo de Arte de Caguas (MUAC). Her work, including Ni hablar del peluquín (1952), was featured in
the ground-breaking exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021-2022) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate
Modern. Her works are held in public collections, notably the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museo
del Barrio, New York in the United States; the Fine Arts Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Instituto de
Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) in Puerto Rico, and the Museo La Casa Amarilla in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2024, her work
appeared in Surrealism and Us at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.
Her early artistic work, influenced by her mentor Eugenio Fernández Granell at the University of Puerto Rico, challenged
academic norms. Granell, an exiled Spanish Surrealist, described Zeno’s proto-feminist, biomorphic abstractions as
‘scorching inventions’ that acted ‘on the world of visual representations like a magical blowtorch.’ In 1953, Zeno earned
a scholarship to study in Paris and quickly joined the Surrealist group upon her arrival in September 1953. During this
period, Zeno began producing metaphysical, biomorphic, and proto-feminist works that explore space, identity, and
the role of the human and feminine in the surreal.
While attending the École du Louvre, her evenings were spent at the Café de la Place Blanche, the Surrealists’ central
meeting spot. She was enthusiastically received and Breton personally invited her to his home to meet his family and
introduced her to the Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim, initiating a significant and fruitful friendship. In July 1954, Zeno
exhibited her work at L’Étoile Scellée, a major Surrealist center in Paris, alongside canonical figures. Her emblematic
piece from this period, Dreams Suspended in the Desert (1954), was widely praised for its sensual line and the influence
of psychic automatism.
The declining health of Zeno’s father compelled her return to the Americas in December 1954, leading to subsequent
moves from Cuba to New York due to political instability. The critical re-discovery of Zeno’s oeuvre confirms her
important place in Surrealist history. Her first major retrospective, Cossette Zeno: Antología, 1951-2014, was held
in 2015 at the Museo de Arte de Caguas (MUAC). Her work, including Ni hablar del peluquín (1952), was featured in
the ground-breaking exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021-2022) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate
Modern. Her works are held in public collections, notably the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museo
del Barrio, New York in the United States; the Fine Arts Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Instituto de
Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) in Puerto Rico, and the Museo La Casa Amarilla in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2024, her work
appeared in Surrealism and Us at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.