About Me
I, Leonor Fini, born in Buenos Aires on 30th August 1907 to an Italian mother and an Argentinian father... My mother left my father before my first birthday and took me to her home in Trieste, Italy, where I was disguised as a boy whenever I left our house for the next five years in order to foil kidnap attempts by my father.
I left Trieste at the age of 17 to paint a family's portraits in Milano (where I had my first painting exhibition).
I relocated to Paris in 1931. There, I became acquainted with, among many others, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso, André Pieyre de Mandiargues and also Salvador DalÃ.
I traveled around Europe by car with de Mandiargues and Cartier-Bresson where the latter photographed me nude in a swimming-pool. This photograph was sold in 2007 for $305,000 - the highest price paid at auction for one of Cartier-Bresson's works to that date.
I painted portraits of Jean Genet, Anna Magnani, Jacques Audiberti, Alida Valli, Schlumberger and Suzanne Flon as well as many other celebrities and wealthy visitors to Paris.
While working for Elsa Schiaparelli I designed the flacon for the perfume, "Shocking," which became the top selling perfume for the House of Schiaparelli.
I also designed costumes and decorations for theater, ballet and opera, including the first ballet performed by Roland Petit's Ballet de Paris, "Les Demoiselles de la nuit," featuring a young Margot Fonteyn. I also designed the costumes for two films, Renato Castellani's "Romeo and Juliet"(1954) and John Huston's "A Walk with Love and Death," (1968) which starred 18 year old Anjelica Huston.
Once I said,
"A woman should live with two men;
one more a lover and the other more a friend."
I proceeded to do so. Stanislao Lepri, an Italian diplomat when she met me, left the diplomatic corp to live with me and paint. Approximately five years later the Polish writer Constantin Jelenski joined us.
My many friends included Jean Cocteau, Giorgio de Chirico, and Alberto Moravia, Fabrizio Clerci and most of the other artists and writers inhabiting or visiting Paris.
In the 1970s, I wrote three novels: "Rogomelec", "Moumour, Contes pour enfants velus" and "l'Oneiropompe".
I illustrated many works by the great authors and poets, including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Shakespeare, as well as texts by new writers. I am, perhaps, best known for my graphic illustrations for "Histoire d'O".
It has been said about me that I am the only artist to paint women without apology. It is true that many of my paintings feature strong, beautiful women (most of them being self-portraits) in ceremonial or provocative situations. Men are often portrayed as lithe figures who are under the protection of my females, sphinx and cats.
As an accomplished draftswoman, watercolourist and painter, I died on 18th January 1996 in Paris... two years after being the inspiration of Madonna for her videoclip 'Bedtime Stories'.
This page is my tribute to the virtual world.
To see more than 300 photos of my paintings and drawings, click here!
If you want to discuss about my art or watch some videos, click there!
