Eric Firestone Gallery Announces Exclusive Representation of the Sari Dienes Foundation

New York, NY — August 2025 — Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce its exclusive representation of the Sari Dienes Foundation, dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of the groundbreaking experimental artist Sari Dienes (1898–1992).

Dienes’s career spans and links European Surrealism, American Neo-Dada, and Pop Art, positioning her as a vital conduit between generations of artists. Best known for her mixed-media frottage paintings—painterly rubbings drawn from textured surfaces of both rural and urban environments—Dienes championed an artistic philosophy rooted in the belief that raw materials and forms exist everywhere. Her influence profoundly shaped younger contemporaries and friends, including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Eric Firestone Gallery is committed to showcasing Dienes’s radical experimentation, situating her as a pioneering artist whose voice remains singular, visionary, and essential to understanding 20th-century art.

Born Sarolta Maria Anna Chylinska in Debreczen, Hungary in 1898, Dienes began her creative journey in dance before turning to visual art. After moving across Europe with her husband, mathematician Paul Dienes, she studied at the Académie Moderne in Paris under Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, later joining the Académie Ozenfant.

Her artistic network extended through Paris’s avant-garde cafés, where she engaged with figures such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. In 1936, as assistant director of the Ozenfant Academy in London, she recruited students including Leonora Carrington and Stella Snead, and introduced Carrington to Max Ernst, one of the leading voices of Surrealism.