Léonor FINI - 1983, Lithograph

Léonor Fini : Born in Buenos Aires in 1908, Léonor Fini is a Surrealist painter, set designer and author from italian origin. In 1937, she leaved Italy for Paris and met André Breton and the Surrealists. Inspired by their theories, she experimented the « automatic drawing ». She beccame a friend of Georges Bataille, Victor Brauner, Paul Éluard and Max Ernst without integrating the group. Her first monographic exhibiition took place in New York, in 1939. Leonor Fini realized many portraits (Jacques Audiberti, Jean Genet, Anna Magnani), costumes for theater, ballet and opera. She also illustrated texts by Marcel Aymé (La Vouivre), Edgar Poe, The Marquis de Sade (History of Juliette, 1945). Many poets, writers, painters and critics dedicated her monographs, essays or poems as Jean Cocteau, Giorgio De Chirico, Éluard, Ernst, Alberto Moravia... She died in 1996.