Frieze Masters: Manina

For Frieze Masters 2026, Richard Saltoun Gallery presents an exhibition dedicated to the pioneering Austrian-Italian artist Manina (1918–2010), one of the most distinctive post-war Surrealists of her generation. This marks her first presentation in London since 1953.

Celebrating her enduring legacy, the gallery presents rare works released from the estate exclusively for this occasion. Fifteen years after her passing in Venice, Manina’s extraordinary contribution to Surrealism remains as powerful and relevant as ever. Bringing together significant paintings and drawings from the 1940s to the 1960s, the selection traces the evolution of a dreamlike and deeply symbolic practice. Recurring motifs — trees of life, shells, eggs, eyes, fish, and radiant suns — form a poetic cosmology in which spiritual and physical worlds dissolve into one another. Female figures with reflective faces, flowing hair, and metamorphic bodies emerge through luminous chromatic fields, suspended between vision and memory.

Following the tragic violent death of the artist’s daughter in 1960, her work acquired a greater spiritual and introspective intensity. These motifs became vehicles for transformation, drawing on alchemy, Jungian thought, and mystical traditions while remaining rooted in a universal visual language. Seen together, these works reveal Manina as a singular voice within post-war Surrealism, whose practice expanded the movement beyond its Parisian origins. The works on view restore visibility to an artist long overlooked, reaffirming her place within the history of women’s Surrealism.