Dimensions: 75.5 x 55.6 cm
signed and inscribed in pencil at the bottom: 'E.A. 18/25 Leonor Fini'
Provenance
Sotheby's, October 2024
Biography
An Argentine surrealist painter of Italian descent. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in Trieste, Italy. At the age of 17, she moved to Milan and then to Paris. There she met Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Pablo Picasso, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala. She traveled around Europe in Cartier-Bresson’s car, and during one such trip, he took the famous photograph of Fini nude in a swimming pool. The photograph sold in 2007 for $305,000 (a record price for his work). She painted portraits of Jean Genet, Anna Magnani, Jacques Audiberti, Alida Valli, Jean Schlumberger (jewelry designer), and Suzanne Flon, as well as many other well-known Parisian celebrities.
Despite her close ties to the Surrealist circle, she did not consider herself one of them. However, her works were often exhibited alongside those of the Surrealists. Her paintings are highly personal and symbolic, sometimes slightly theatrical. They reveal a fascination with the female body and sexuality. While working for Elsa Schiaparelli, she designed the Shocking perfume bottle, which became a signature product of the Schiaparelli brand. She also designed costumes and sets for theater, ballet, and opera. She designed costumes for Renato Castellani’s film *Romeo and Juliet* (1954) and John Huston’s *Walk with Love and Death* (1968). She was married once, briefly, to Federico Veneziani. From 1941, she was involved with the Italian aristocrat and former consul in Monaco, Stanislao Lepri, who, under her influence, took up surrealist painting. From 1952, Fini was in a relationship with the Polish writer and journalist Konstanty Jeleński. From that year until the deaths of Lepri (1980) and Jeleński (1987), the three of them lived together in a house in Paris, leading an intense social life and moving in artistic bohemian circles. All three were bisexual and led a fairly open sexual life, engaging in extramarital relationships. At Jeleński’s urging, Fini provided the Lambert Gallery (conceived and founded by Kazimierz Romanowicz) with a list of addresses of art dealers, collectors, socialites, and art critics.
