Two Women
Leonor Fini
LEONOR FINI, 1939. OIL ON CANVAS.
“I paint pictures which don’t exist”, said Leonor Fini, “and which I would like to see”. But her quest to create worlds as she wanted them to exist extended far beyond her paintings and into the very fibre of her daily being. An Italian Argentinian, renowned for talent and beauty so much that she was known as the Queen of Paris during the 1930s, Fini blazed a trail defined by no one. She rejected the title of Surrealist, despite appearing in multiple exhibitions and publications and counting many of the surrealists as her closest friends and occasional lovers, as she refused to give up her independence to the often dictatorial whims of the group’s founder Andre Breton. She did not want to be defined, not as a female artist, or one who depicted erotic scenes of lesbian love, but instead only wanted to create the world in her vision, unapologetically, and let everyone else follow behind.