![]() Interest in Fini has risen in recent years among collectors and museums. ![]() "Clearly the dominant person in the painting is Leonor Fini." "She presents herself very strong, very powerful," he says. Weinstein says it's a role reversal from paintings that typically show a naked woman reclining before a fully-clad man. One of the paintings in the Fini exhibition in Miami shows the artist, fully-dressed, leading her semi-naked male lover. "You can see men that look like women and women that look like men in her paintings. "You can see that in her painting," Souhami says. Fini said her mother disguised her as a boy in her early years in an effort to evade attempts by her father to kidnap her in a custody dispute. Souhami says Fini's progressive, radical at the time, approach to gender identity stemmed from her childhood. For much of her life, she lived in a relationship with two men, who shared her Paris home. In some ways, Souhami says Fini's personal life was as fantastic as her Surrealist art. © Estate of Leonor Fini, Courtesy Galerie Minsky & Weinstein Gallery Armoire anthropomorphe (Anthropomorphic Wardrobe), Leonor Fini, 1939, Oil on wood Weinstein says, "Castelli actually said that had he not known Leonor Fini, his life might have been very different." She also created a number of pieces for the show, including an armoire with paintings of herself on its two doors.Ĭastelli, who moved to New York, became an immensely important art dealer, later also championing the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement. When her childhood friend, art dealer Leo Castelli opened his first gallery in Paris, she curated his premier show, a Surrealist exhibition. Nobody knew this at the time but it's Leonor Fini."įini's connections played an important role in gaining recognition and acceptance for the emerging Surrealist movement. "There was a time" Weinstein says, "when the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction was a piece by Henri Cartier-Bresson which was a woman floating naked in the water from the neck down. She says Fini called her five times a day.įor a show in the 1980s, Souhami recalls combing Paris bakeries to find 20 white cakes that surrounded the artist, dressed also in white, for a video and photo shoot.įini fascinated the other artists and photographers in her circle. ![]() Souhami became Fini's art dealer and worked with her for the rest of the painter's life. Souhami continues her story in a mixture of English and French, interpreted by her friend Victor Picou: "When she met Arlette, Leonor said, 'I don't like women in general' and Arlette said, 'Neither do I.' And she said, 'OK we're going to get along, right,'" Picou laughs. "I worked all my life for Leonor," she says. She found the artist overwhelming, opinionated and fascinating. Paris gallery owner Arlette Souhami, now 82, first met Leonor Fini in 1978. ©Estate of Leonor Fini, Courtesy Galerie Minsky & Weinstein Gallery Black Scarecrow mask, Leonor Fini, c.1960, Round holes for eyes, black thick felt fabric, mounted on stand of driftwood tree branch (found in Corsica)
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