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Leonor Fini - Couple - 1970
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ProfessionalSaint-Didier, FranceOn Whoppah since January 2022 • 8 sales
Product description
Original surrealist etching, hand-signed by Leonor Fini, printed on Arches Rives paper, with the artist's stamp depicting a cat's head placed near the signature.
Circa 1970
Signed and numbered by hand
Dimensions: 66 × 50 cm
Leonor Fini is considered one of the most important female artists of the mid-20th century, alongside Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning, most of whom she knew personally.
Her career, spanning nearly six decades, encompassed numerous fields: painting, graphic arts, book illustration, object design—including the famous bust-shaped perfume bottle designed for Schiaparelli's Shocking—as well as set and costume design for theater, ballet, opera, and film.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 to Italian and Argentinian parents, Leonor Fini (August 30, 1907 – January 18, 1996, Paris) grew up in Trieste, Italy, raised by her mother, Malvina, an independent woman with a strong character.
Largely self-taught, she studied anatomy by observing cadavers in the local morgue and absorbed the principles of composition and technique of the great masters through books and museum visits.
Her early artistic experiences in Trieste led her to Milan, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1929, and then to Paris in 1931. Her exuberant personality and flamboyant outfits quickly earned her a unique place in the Parisian art world.
She then forged close relationships with several leading figures of Surrealism, including Paul Éluard, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, with whom she had a brief affair. Conversely, she was highly critical of André Breton, whose misogyny she rejected. Although she exhibited regularly with the Surrealists, she never considered herself a full member of the movement.
The American art dealer Julien Levy, impressed by her painting and fascinated by her personality, invited her to New York in 1936. There, she participated in an exhibition alongside Max Ernst and met several artists associated with American Surrealism, notably Joseph Cornell and Pavel Tchelitchew.
Her work was also featured in the landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism, alongside artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy.
In 1939, in Paris, she organized an exhibition of Surrealist furniture for her childhood friend Leo Castelli, to mark the opening of his first gallery. Introductory texts for her exhibition catalogs were written by, among others, De Chirico, Max Ernst, and Jean Cocteau.
One of the major themes in Fini's work lies in the complexity of gender relations, particularly the confrontation between a dominant woman and a passive or androgynous man. In several of her most powerful works, the female figure takes the form of a sphinx, often bearing the artist's own features.
Fini was also a remarkable portraitist. Among her role models were Stanislao Lepri and Constantin “Kot” Jelenski, her two longtime companions with whom she lived simultaneously, surrounded by numerous cats, as well as the writer Jean Genet, the actresses Maria Casarès, Anna Magnani, Alida Valli, and Suzanne Flon, the ballerina Margot Fonteyn, the filmmaker Luchino Visconti, and the artists Meret Oppenheim and Leonora Carrington.
Her taste for extravagant masks, sophisticated costumes, and fantastical worlds also explains her extensive work in theater and film. She designed sets, costumes, and posters for numerous prestigious productions, notably for the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, George Balanchine's ballet The Crystal Palace, Jean Anouilh's The Maidens of the Night, Renato Castellani's Romeo and Juliet, Wagner's Tannhäuser, Racine's Bérénice, Jean Genet's The Maids and The Balcony, as well as for film, particularly around Federico Fellini's 8½ and John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death.
Talented, glamorous, and resolutely unconventional, Leonor Fini was also the subject of numerous poems and photographic portraits by leading figures of her time, including Paul Éluard, Charles Henry Ford, Georges Hugnet, Erwin Blumenfeld, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Horst P. Horst, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Specifications
ConditionVery goodColorsMulti ColorMaterialPaperNumber of items1OrientationPortraitArt sizeMediumHeight66 cmWidth50 cm
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About this seller
ProfessionalSaint-Didier, FranceOn Whoppah since January 2022 • 8 sales