LEONOR FINI

Biography

Leonor Fini (1907-1996) was an Argentine-Italian surrealist painter, theatre designer, and one of the most flamboyant personalities in 20th-century art. Her powerful, sensual paintings of sphinx-women, goddesses, and cats embodied a revolutionary feminine consciousness that challenged every convention of her era.

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A Childhood of Turmoil & Disguise

Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 to an Argentine father and Italian mother, Fini's life began in utter turmoil. Her parents' strife-ridden marriage ended before she was a year old. After their divorce, her mother gathered up Leonor and their belongings and returned to Italy.

Settling in the northern Italian city of Trieste, Fini's mother began a peaceful new life. This was soon shattered when her ex-husband traveled to Italy to kidnap Leonor and take her back to Argentina. With no help from local authorities and no legal protection, Fini's mother nonetheless outwitted him.

For six nightmare years, she disguised Leonor as a boy whenever they ventured out of the house. As absurd as this may seem, it worked. Her husband gave up his mission and returned to Argentina, never to be seen again. This extraordinary childhood experience of gender fluidity would profoundly shape Fini's artistic vision.

The Birth of an Artist: Vision in Darkness

Fini's career began in a traumatic way. In her early teens, she suffered an eye disease that forced her to wear bandages on both eyes. Living in a world of darkness for quite some time, she had little to do but develop her inner vision. She spent her days visualizing fantastic images, and after her recovery, decided to become an artist.

As she did with everything, Fini pursued art with passion, determination, and conviction. She visited museums regularly and studied Renaissance masters, Mannerism, Romanticism, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Instead of busying herself with the usual juvenile concerns, Fini immersed herself in her uncle's large collection of art books.

Her talent grew rapidly and at the tender age of seventeen, Fini had her debut exhibit in a Trieste gallery. More amazing, word of her talent reached Milan, a major Italian art center. The city's upper echelon loved Fini's work and commissioned portraits by the young master. This early display of talent earned her the friendship of renowned Italian artists such as Funi, Carrà, and Tosi.

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Paris: The Cardinal's Robes

Her early induction to Europe's plethora of avant-garde movements caused her to mature quickly in originality, philosophical development, and personality. It also inspired her trademark sense of autonomy and non-conformism, which she embraced with the same passion as she did art.

Her eccentric persona and flamboyant dress was rivaled only by Dalí. This was not posturing showmanship but a form of integral surrealist expression that uses the entire body as theatre to protest against conventional society.

She was only eighteen when Fini arrived in Paris, but her art quickly found its way into galleries. Art writer/curator Whitney Chadwick describes this legendary period:

The Surrealists: Refusal to Join

This bizarre meeting prompted Éluard, Ernst, Magritte, and Brauner to introduce Fini to the Surrealist Group. She developed friendships with the women members of the movement and participated in surrealist exhibits.

To everyone's complete surprise, Fini not only refused to join the group, she denied being a surrealist. Though it is said she did not join because of André Breton's authoritarian leadership, she had more fundamental reasons.

Like Dalí and Artaud, Fini saw the group's obsession with treatises and theories not as radical, but as a manifestation of what Dalí called "typical petit bourgeois mentality." For her, surrealism was beyond manifestos and theories.

In the sexual realm, she found the group homophobic and misogynist despite its endeavors to idealize women and liberate sexual desire without the interference of morality. John B. Myers, a gallery dealer who documented his experiences with surrealists, wrote of this double standard:

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The New Woman: Amazons & Goddesses

Fini was not without ideological contradictions of her own. Despite her denial of being a surrealist, she adhered to many of surrealism's tenets. In fact, they played an integral role in her quest to envision a "new woman".

Fini claimed to use images from her subconscious, adopted Georges Bataille's philosophy of a return to the mythological, spiritual and visionary aspects of primal cultures. She founded her methodology on surrealism's tenet of delving into the self and described herself as living a life in revolt.

According to art writer/educator Julie Byrd:

Refusal to consider herself a surrealist and her willingness to nonetheless align herself with the movement was never an issue with the Surrealists. It was not unusual for the group to seek allies and sympathizers from non-members. Picasso and Giacometti were among these allies. She was perhaps the only outsider who consistently kept close to the group.

A Revolutionary Feminine Vision

Fini's extensive oeuvre has been an invaluable contribution to the development of a modern feminine consciousness, but her version differed somewhat from the other women surrealists.

In contrast with Remedios Varo's ideal woman, Fini's was not cerebral, mystical or ironic but authoritarian, sensual, and governed by passion. She portrays them in an almost Amazonian sense: as goddesses, warriors, and voluptuaries.

Compared with Tanning and Carrington, Fini's art did not symbolically transfer female sexuality onto childhood—she placed it within the adult realm. There is none of the resentment toward masculinized society that appears in the other surrealist women's art.

Neither is there the subliminal but ubiquitous sense of determinism that underlies much of their work. Varo and Kahlo depict the masculine position as arbitrary. Fini was too insolent for such kindness.

Her work simply ignores or reduces the masculine position to insignificance. Whereas most of the other surrealist women's art contains statements about female sexuality, Fini's is more a proclamation and celebration of it.

The women in her art are at once beautiful and alluring, yet powerful and threatening, embodying not only a female sexuality but that which had been thought of as exclusively male. In that sense, Fini envisioned a historically unique—and prophetic—feminine sexual duality absent from the other surrealist women's constructs.

Later Career & Legacy

After WWII, Fini's career expanded. She designed theatre sets and costumes, and did book illustrations. Her work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums throughout the world.

Although the surrealist moniker followed her until her death in 1996, she always rejected categorization of any kind. She changed styles often and employed various techniques and media as if to shrug off her tenacious image as a "woman surrealist."

Her efforts had no effect on the public or the academia and perhaps never will. It is almost impossible to consider her life and her art without proclaiming her a surrealist—an extraordinary one at that.

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Explore the Galleries

Leonor Fini's vast body of work spans painting, graphic art, and her famous feline subjects. Explore her complete artistic vision across three stunning galleries: