Leonor Fini (1907-1996)

Leonor Fini (1907-1996)

Wonderful Female Painters

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Leonor Fini (1907-1996)

Girl with Shells (1940)

Leonor Fini was a sort of bohemian queen of Paris, a little-remembered queen, which is unfair.

However, some of those who do know her work and her career have risked saying that this eccentric painter, born in Argentina, is one of the most important female artists of her century. (A controversial affirmation considering Frida, or Remedios Varo, or Carrington, —who was her friend— among other brilliant artists.)

Leonor painted dreamlike, absurd, suggestive, symbolic, and unreal scenes, and therefore she is associated with Surrealism. But like Frida, she did not consider herself part of the movement. Moreover, as she was sexually free, she fought furiously with André Breton, the leader of the surrealists —and writer of the manifesto of the movement— for his homophobia and misogyny.

Like all great artists, she developed a very personal language to show her universe, made up of worlds of bizarre scenery where the protagonists are sensual, mysterious, and feline women. She was actually a fan of cats, which are so disturbing, eternal, and powerful.

This bohemian queen was a theatre designer, a writer of novels, an illustrator of works by Edgar Allan Poe or the Marquis de Sade, an extravagant and exquisite painter at the same time. And she was a true exponent of eroticism in art. She expressed: “All painting is erotic. That eroticism does not necessarily have to be in the theme. It can be in the way a garment is painted, in the design of a hand, in a fold.”

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