August 30, 1908-January 18, 1996
Born in Buenos Aires, Leonor Fini moved to Trieste as a girl when her parents separated. After holding her first solo exhibition in Milan in 1929, she relocated to Paris in 1931. There she quickly insinuated herself among the artists of the Surrealist movement, exhibiting with them in 1933 and holding her first one-person show in Paris in 1935. As a result, she became very close friends with a number of the major surrealists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Eugène Ionesco, Georges Hugnet, Georges Bataille, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, and Giorgio de Chirico. A prolific libertine, Fini provided some of the material for Pauline Réage’s novel Story of O.
According to her obituary in The Guardian: “At one gallery opening she wore a beautiful Siberian wolf-fur coat, which she had exchanged for a painting. When someone suggested it was rather warm for such clothing, she opened her coat to reveal that she was naked. George Hoyningen-Huene photographed her dressed in nothing but black feathers. In 1937 she designed the Shocking scent bottle in the shape of Mae West’s torso for Schiaparelli, and exhibited her own furniture.” Fini lived for forty years in a menage-a-trois with Count Stanislao Lepri and Constanine Jelenski. She kept a large number of cats — as many as 23 at a time — which she would take with her when she traveled.
Le Temps de la Mue
Etching , 7''x9''
Le don d'absence
Lithograph on arches, ed. of 225, 19.5''x25.5''
