As Surrealism's centennial nears, its dark star Leonor Fini's legend is peaking. Her life was as idiosyncratic as her daring, sensuous work.
On the 100th anniversary of Surrealism, Leonor Fini, the Surrealist woman artist, is finally getting the recognition she deserves. But by her own measure, Fini was neither a Surrealist, nor was she even a woman artist.
“She wanted to identify as an independent artist,” said the Parisian gallerist Arlette Souhami. “’I am an artist,’ she would say. ‘Not a woman artist, not a man artist, but an artist.’ She refused to show in exhibitions composed of female artists. She hated extremists of any kind. She did not want to be associated with any specific group, be they women, or Surrealists, or whomever else.” Souhami was Fini’s friend and art dealer of almost 20 years and attributes her underappreciation by the art world to her insistence on nonalignment.
“Leonor was highly intelligent,” she said, “but very difficult.”