Leonor Fini was an Argentinian-born Italian surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author, known for her depictions of powerful and erotic women.
23 Facts About Leonor Fini
2.
Leonor Fini made his young wife very unhappy and, within eighteen month's of Leonor's birth, she fled back to Trieste with the child.
3.
Leonor Fini was raised there and she would be expelled from various schools for being rebellious.
4.
Leonor Fini moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932.
5.
Leonor Fini came to know Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Salvador Dali.
6.
Leonor Fini traveled Europe by car with Mandiargues and Cartier-Bresson where Cartier-Bresson took a photograph, one of his best known, of her naked in a pool with her then partner, de Mandiargues.
7.
The photograph of Leonor Fini sold in 2007 for $305,000 - the highest price paid at auction for one of Cartier-Bresson's works to that date.
8.
Leonor Fini had no formal artistic training, yet she was familiar with the traditional Renaissance and Mannerist styles encountered during her upbringing in Italy.
9.
Leonor Fini was part of a pre-war generation of Parisian artists, and very important in the Surrealist movement though she is often overlooked in favour of her male contemporaries.
10.
In 1943, Leonor Fini was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.
11.
Leonor Fini's painting has been described both as a challenge to Breton's ideals and an echo of her obligation to disguise herself during her childhood.
12.
Leonor Fini painted portraits of Jean Genet, Anna Magnani, Jacques Audiberti, Alida Valli, Jean Schlumberger and Suzanne Flon as well as many other celebrities and wealthy visitors to Paris.
13.
In 1959, Leonor Fini made a fairy tale-inspired painting called Les Sorcieres for the Mexican actress, Maria Felix.
14.
Leonor Fini started taking on design projects in the 1930s as a source of extra income.
15.
Leonor Fini designed costumes and decorations for theatre, ballet and opera, including famously the first ballet performed by Roland Petit's Ballet de Paris, Les Demoiselles de la nuit, featuring a young Margot Fonteyn.
16.
Leonor Fini designed the costumes for two films, Renato Castellani's Romeo and Juliet and John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death.
17.
Leonor Fini's friends included Jean Cocteau, Giorgio de Chirico, and Alberto Moravia, Fabrizio Clerici and most of the other artists and writers inhabiting or visiting Paris.
18.
Leonor Fini illustrated many works by the great authors and poets, including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Shakespeare, as well as texts by new writers.
19.
Leonor Fini was very generous with her illustrations and donated many drawings to writers to help them get published.
20.
Leonor Fini met the Polish writer Konstanty Jelenski, known as Kot in Rome in January 1952.
21.
Leonor Fini was delighted to discover that he was the illegitimate half-brother of Sforzino Sforza, who had been one of her favorite lovers.
22.
Leonor Fini later employed an assistant to join the household, which he described as "a little bit of prison and a lot of theatre".
23.
In 2018, Leonor Fini was the subject of a short documentary, Gloria's Call by Cheri Gaulke.