Miami Beach residents voted for the city to buy this Miami artist’s work at Art Basel

Perhaps nobody had a better first day of Basel than Miami-based gallerist Anthony Spinello, whose booth is a popular spot in the Nova Sector, a platform for younger galleries and artists.

Last year, the gallery sold out of artist Esai Alfredo’s paintings within an hour. This year by 2 p.m. all but two pieces by Buenos Aires-born, Miami-based ceramicist Nina Surel had been purchased. This is the first time Surel has shown her work at the fair.

That’s not the only good news. Surel’s large-scale ceramic mural, called “Allegory of Florida,” was acquired by the City of Miami Beach for its Legacy Purchase Program. Each year, the city’s Art in Public Places Committee selects three artworks by emerging artists featured in Art Basel Miami Beach’s Positions and Nova sectors with a $50,000 budget. Miami Beach residents overwhelming voted to purchase Surel’s work through an online survey.

Surel, 53, creates work centered around the female body, womanhood and creation. The “Allegory of Florida” piece, a bone-white ceramic wall relief, represents Florida as a female goddess. The other two finalists were works by artists william cordova and Ximena Garrido-Lecca.

She is the second woman artist to have won the Legacy Purchase from Spinello’s gallery, he said.

“I was very moved,” said Surel, who creates her works from the all-female studio space Collective 62 in Liberty City. “I’m an Argentinian, but I’ve been here for 22 years. I’m not born and raised, but I feel very Floridian. I’m here with my community. This is all made here.”

Spinello’s booth is presenting “Greta Chamotta/ Great Love,” a collection of Surel’s recent works inspired by Afro-Caribbean, Latin American and Mediterranean traditions and mythologies. The centerpiece of the booth is “Greta Chamotta,” another large wall relief made from over 1,000 pounds of stoneware ceramic. Several motifs reappear throughout the works, including pregnancy, breast-shaped fruits and the waters of life. Notably, there are no male figures present.

“It’s about telling another story,” Surel said. “Maybe God was female. Who knows?”

Collectors include prominent Miami real estate developer Jorge Pérez, who acquired “The Holder,” a terracotta-colored stoneware sculpture of a female figure carrying breast-shaped fruits on her shoulders.

“I’m very proud of Nina,” Spinello said. “I think she’s worked really hard, and she’s really arrived to a really incredible body of work all about women, which I think is important conversation to be having now, considering the attacks on women’s bodies.”

Spinello has known Surel, a friend of his, for decades, he said. About a year ago, when Surel showed Spinello this new body of work, he was blown away.

“It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve seen a lot,” he said. “This is the best work she’s done.”

Surel, who had to pause the interview several times to hug friends congratulating her, is certainly feeling the love.

“Sometimes [people] think that Miami is a young city, very superficial,” she said. “And I’m a middle-aged women with three kids that goes to work every single morning. I feel a lot of the support.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 7:42 PM.