Hauser & Wirth to Represent María Berrío, Whose Collages Blend Reality and Mythology

María Berrío, whose collaged paintings mesh folklore with her own personal lore, will join the roster at Hauser & Wirth. The gallery, which will mount a solo show of her work in 2025, will co-represented the artist with her London-based gallery Victoria Miro.

Hauser & Wirth will also bring one of Berrío’s works to its Art Basel Miami Beach booth this December.

Born in Colombia and based in New York, Berrío has received attention for her paintings of people, mainly women, in domestic settings and forests. These works refer to issues related to immigration, displacement, and diasporas.

In a statement, Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, said, “Part of a generation of artists bringing fresh energy to the medium of painting, María is a confident innovator dedicated to both technical inventiveness and new interpretations of the deep, psychologically rich reservoir where folklore, mythology and history mingle.”

Her work has been the subject of a spread of solo shows over the past few years, including a 2022 exhibition held in Venice during the Biennale. Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston and Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art followed that show.

During the pandemic, the market for her work surged, with auction results steadily climbing between 2020 and 2022. Twenty-four works by her have been sold publicly at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, with her 2015 work He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not going for a record $1.6 million in 2022 in New York. That result more than doubled its estimate; several months later, her painting The Lovers 3 (2015) went for $1.6 million during a New York sale.