A towering sculpture by Leonora Carrington that Sotheby’s has called “undoubtedly the greatest sculpture” in her body of work is set to star in the Modern Evening Auction on November 18. La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) is making its first appearance at auction in nearly 30 years and has been given an estimate between $5 million and $7 million.

Created in 1951, almost a decade on from her relocation to Mexico, the carved wooden sculpture stems from a period of febrile creativity during which Carrington fell in with a clique of artists who shared her fascination with spiritualism and the occult. Standing well over six feet tall, La Grande Dame is a poised, puzzling figure with elongated features and an indecipherable expression spread across its spade-shaped head.

It was one of several works made in collaboration with the woodworker José Horna (husband of her friend Kati Horna, the surrealist photographer) with Carrington spreading her Hieronymus Bosch-like figures across its body. The scenes present Carrington’s characteristic concerns of femininity and the cycles of life and deploy symbolism from Ancient Egyptian, Celtic, and Mexican mythology.

Leonora Carrington, La Grande Dame (1951). Photo: Sotheby’s.

“The work synthesizes diverse iconographies of the divine feminine into a human dimension,” said Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s head of Latin American Art. “La Grande Dame creates a profound sense of otherworldly presence acting as a Surrealist portal to transport the viewer both physically and psychically into her wondrous universe.”

On the sculpture’s chest, this universe sees a teal-colored unicorn presiding over a scene in which a gleaming egg is handed from one woman to another, a girl in red waits below, her palm open. The egg, a frequent Carrington symbol of female power and potential, reappears on the La Grande Dame’s back hovering between a dandelion figure and a wolf-like goddess.

Reverse of Leonora Carrington, La Grande Dame (1951). Photo: Sotheby’s.

The sculpture’s arrival at Sotheby’s represents a continuation of the surging interest in the work of the British-Mexican artist. Following Carrington’s death in 2011, the Surrealist has belatedly received museum retrospectives across the U.K., Spain, and Denmark. La Grande Dame, which had long been in the collection of Surrealist patron Edward James, has itself been exhibited at venues from the Tate Modern in London to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In turn, demand for Carrington’s work at market is soaring. Back in May, her painting depicting the fantastical decadence of Dagobert I, a 7th-century Frankish king, Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945), sold at Sotheby’s for $28.5 million. Back in 1995, the same work went for $475,500 ($990,000, adjusted for inflation.)

Detail of Leonora Carrington, La Grande Dame (1951). Photo: Sotheby’s.

Amid such interest, there has been a heated debate among experts and family members over the authenticity of Carrington’s late bronze sculptures. From 2008 through to her death, Carrington continued to make art, but was unable to paint on account of arthritis. Work from this period has duly come under suspicion.

On the one side, Consejo Leonora Carrington, represented by her younger son, Pablo Weisz Carrington, issues certificates of authenticity for dozens of bronzes from this period. It considers them an exclusive group whose creation was entirely overseen by the artist. On the other side, Gabriel Weisz Carrington, the elder son, who runs the Fundación Leonora Carrington believes the bronzes are the work of profiteering foundries. A surreal turn, to be sure.