Bio

Leonor Fini (August 30, 1907 – January 18, 1996) was an Argentinian surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author, known for her depictions of powerful women.

Throughout a long career, the canvases of Leonor Fini's journey between the pains of despair and the serenity of enlightenment but remain polished with eroticism at every extreme. Driven by passion, liberty, and sexual experimentation, she was arguably the most rebellious, theatrical, and autonomous of the female Surrealists. 

Although she exhibited with the Surrealists, Fini's staunch individuality was often at odds with the collective ideas of the group. Unlike many women who became central to the movement, she was not impressed by the charisma and intellectualism of male members. Already well read and versed in psychoanalytic theory, Fini refused to be submissive or subordinate to men. She lived flamboyantly and communally and always with two men, one as her lover and one as her friend.&am

Statement

Described by many to be particularly tall and commanding in physical appearance with very unusual cat-like eyes, in many ways she was more "creaturely" than human. Taking the artistic interest in the motif of an animal/human hybrid somewhat literally, she stood as an embodiment of feline transformation and metamorphosis, and came to accurately identify herself with the ancient figure of a Sphinx. Deadly in Greek tradition, whilst benevolent but ferocious in Egyptian stories, the appearance of the mythical creature is symbolic of Fini's love for artifice and nature combined.

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