The grand halls of Milan’s Palazzo Reale currently host a seminal tribute to artistic defiance and fierce individuality. On view from February 26 through June 22, 2025, Io Sono LEONOR FINI (I Am LEONOR FINI) presents one of the most comprehensive retrospectives dedicated to an artist whose untamed, rebellious gaze still challenges and mesmerizes viewers from across the temporal divide.
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Almost a hundred years after her debut exhibition in Milan at the Galleria Barbaroux in 1929, Leonor Fini returns to the Lombard capital with a major solo exhibition meticulously curated by Tere Arcq and Carlos Martín. Structured into nine thematic sections showcasing approximately 100 works, including 70 paintings, drawings, photographs, costumes, books, and videos, the exhibition offers a profound rediscovery of one of the most revolutionary figures of the 1930s European cultural scene, now revisited through a contemporary lens.
Io Sono LEONOR FINI places a particular emphasis on Fini’s influence on theatre and film, featuring two costumes and numerous sketches from the La Scala Theatre and the Paris Opera.
In the constellation of 20th-century art rebels and iconoclasts, few creators shone with the fierce luminosity of Leonor Fini. Described by Max Ernst as “the Italian Fury in Paris,” the Buenos Aires-born, Paris-based artist carved her path through the male-dominated art world with ferocious independence. Defying the social conventions imposed upon women of her time, particularly regarding marriage and motherhood, Fini carved out a life entirely her own. She surrounded herself with an extraordinary circle of friends and a devoted entourage of lovers, cultivating a world where autonomy, desire, and artistic expression reigned above societal expectations.
Born in Argentina but raised in Trieste, Italy, Fini emerged in interwar Paris as a largely self-taught painter whose visions upended conventional power dynamics. While she participated in major Surrealist exhibitions and maintained friendships with many Surrealist artists—most notably with Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning—Fini openly disdained Surrealism’s founder, André Breton, and the movement’s patriarchal and misogynist underpinnings. The self-styled “Sphinx of Surrealism” saw more differences than similarities between herself and the Surrealists. Preferring to “walk alone,” Fini adamantly rejected being classified as a Surrealist. “I am a painter, that’s enough,” she famously declared, refusing to be confined by any label or school.
The artist’s engagement with gender discourse embodies a nuanced complexity that resists conventional classification. Dismissing gender equality as a framework she deemed reductive and restrictive, the fiercely independent artist refused the feminist label and instead maintained that women were not only fundamentally distinct from men, but at times superior.
Unlike her contemporaries, who often depicted women as objects of desire or vessels of mystery, Fini’s canvases feature commanding female figures who control their environments with sphinx-like authority. As the muse of her own universe, Fini painted powerful female figures while embodying this vigor, cultivating a theatrical personal aesthetic that was as much a part of her artistic statement as the works she created. Leonor was the cynosure of every social gathering she attended or organized, appearing at Parisian balls in self-designed elaborate costumes that transformed her into living sculptures. Memorably, Fini made an unforgettable appearance at Carlos de Beistegui’s 1951 “Ball Of The Century” in Venice, dressed as a black angel with spiky wings attached to her gown. The uncompromising artist wore her nonconformity as a badge of honor, rejecting societal constraints on her art and lifestyle. Yet beneath the carefully constructed public persona worked an artist of formidable technical prowess and profound psychological insight.
The exhibition’s curatorial themes illuminate Fini’s engagement with Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious. As Gloria Orenstein stated in her 1973 essay Women of Surrealism in the Feminist Art Journal, Fini’s “symbolism was associated with the Female Archetypes of woman as Goddess, Magna Mater, Alchemist, Spinner, Weaver of men’s destinies, and above all as Creator, Spiritual Guide, and Visionary.” Her recurring priestesses, sorceresses, and omniscient sphinxes embody aspects of the sacred feminine, while androgynous figures destabilize fixed notions of gender. Fini’s females possess agency and interior lives that remain tantalizingly inaccessible to viewers, who are often positioned as uninitiated intruders to the hermetic rituals portrayed.
Fini’s oeuvre establishes an autonomous visual lexicon that draws from diverse art historical sources, seamlessly synthesizing the aesthetic principles of Renaissance masters such as Piero della Francesca and Pontormo with the dynamic theatricality of Mannerist composition and the probing psychological inquiries of Modernism. Particularly striking is the technical virtuosity that animates her phantasmagoric visions. Her command of classical oil techniques yields surfaces of extraordinary luminosity—most notably, her rendering of flesh attains an almost uncanny iridescence evocative of Rubens’ chromatic subtleties. This technical mastery engenders a productive tension between the dreamlike subject matter and the meticulous execution of her compositions, reinforcing their evocative potency.
The exhibition’s opening section, Scene Primordiali (Primordial Scenes), presents works that crystallize Fini’s formative experiences, particularly her preoccupation with mortality. Unlike male contemporaries who intellectualized death through theoretical frameworks, Fini’s approach emerged from direct engagement; from age thirteen, she frequented Trieste’s morgue, painstakingly studying and rendering the corpse as artistic subject.
Le Bout du Monde (1948) exemplifies this foundational fascination. In this apocalyptic self-portrait, Fini depicts herself partially submerged in water, presiding over a realm populated by animated skulls with eyeballs intact. The composition subverts conventional memento mori traditions, rejecting both romantic morbidity and religious didacticism. Instead, Fini establishes an alternative visual epistemology where decomposition becomes a site of aesthetic transformation. The artist’s unflinching gaze challenges viewers to recognize beauty within corporeal dissolution—positioning decay not as a terminal endpoint but as generative metamorphosis.
In the section LIAISONS: Spaces for Alternative Expressions of Sexuality and Family, Leonor Fini’s lifelong engagement with transgression—and its entanglements with sex, death, and promiscuity—manifests in works that challenge moral conventions and explore defiant alternatives. Dans la tour (1952) and Rasch, Rasch, Rasch, meine Puppen Warten (1975) destabilize perception, weaving intimate and domestic narratives around fluid kinship, autonomy, and desire. Raised beyond paternal and religious authority, Fini reimagines the bedroom as a liminal space where intimacy and ritual collide.
In Fini’s late masterwork Rasch, Rasch, Rasch, meine Puppen Warten (1975), the artist orchestrates a complex psychodrama within a meticulously rendered interior space. Five female figures—neither fully animate nor inanimate—occupy an ambiguous theatrical environment where reflective surfaces create unsettling doublings. The compressed perspectival construction and chiaroscuro lighting evoke quattrocento portraiture while simultaneously destabilizing spatial certainty. Adorned in pseudo-ceremonial attire that references medieval and Renaissance costume, these figures embody Fini’s career-long interrogation of performed femininity. The painting exemplifies her mature visual lexicon wherein the female form functions as both sovereign presence and transformative vessel, challenging conventional subject-object relations through deliberate suspension between revelation and concealment.
In Dans la Tour (1952), the artist executes a profound reversal of Western art’s gendered power dynamics through her self-portrayal with her lifelong companion Constantin Jelenski. Clothed in austere black attire, Fini commands the composition as hierophant before a luminous threshold, her authoritative gesture directing the nude, entranced Jelenski toward transcendence. This calculated inversion transforms conventional subject-object relations, positioning the feminine as the locus of spiritual authority. The ruined architectural setting redolent of Symbolist liminality underscores Fini’s radical reconceptualization of gender relations; Fini manipulates established iconographic traditions to articulate an alternative visual epistemology where feminine agency guides masculine experience, anticipating feminist discourse.
Io Sono LEONOR FINI culminates with Persona, a curated selection of photographic portraits and paintings that consider the artist’s enduring fascination with disguise and theatrical self-fashioning. A meditation on self-representation, the works in this section reveal Fini’s lifelong fascination with disguise, masquerade, and the fluid construction of gender and identity. Among these works, Autoportrait au chapeau rouge (1968) stands as a potent farewell. Clad in a striking orange-red wide-brimmed hat, Fini fixes the viewer with an unwavering gaze—at once imperious and intimate, daring yet elusive.
It is here, in this final confrontation, that Fini compels the viewer not only to observe but to decode, to step beyond mere admiration and into a deeper engagement with the mythology she wove around herself. The sphinx’s riddle lingers, unresolved—an open-ended provocation, ensuring that Fini remains, as ever, unbound by time, convention, or expectation. Her departure is never final; instead, it is a passage into perpetuity, where the artist’s presence continues to challenge, mesmerize, and transform those who dare to meet her gaze.
LEONOR FINI
Leonor Fini (1907–1996) was a singular force in 20th-century art, renowned for her defiance of convention and refusal to be confined within traditional artistic movements. Born in Buenos Aires to an Argentine father and Italian mother, Fini was raised in Trieste, where she was immersed in a cosmopolitan intellectual milieu that shaped her early artistic sensibilities. Influenced by literary figures such as James Joyce and Italo Svevo, she cultivated an autodidactic approach and embarked on extensive travels, deepening her engagement with classical and Renaissance traditions under the tutelage of Achille Funi in Milan.
Arriving in Paris in 1933, Fini found herself at the heart of the Surrealist movement, forging connections with artists including Max Ernst and Paul Éluard. While experimenting with automatism, she resisted formal alignment with Surrealism, rejecting its prevailing depictions of women as passive muses. Instead, her work explored themes of feminine power, personal mythology, and gender fluidity, crafting enigmatic compositions suffused with psychoanalytic and symbolic resonances.
Beyond painting, Fini made significant contributions to decorative arts and fashion, notably collaborating with couturière Elsa Schiaparelli on the iconic “Shocking” perfume bottle. During World War II, she sought refuge in Monte Carlo, where she partnered with Stanislao Lepri, an Italian diplomat-turned-artist who remained her lifelong companion.
Fini’s later years in Rome solidified her status among Italy’s cultural elite, engaging with figures such as Alberto Moravia and Luchino Visconti. Despite historical marginalization, her oeuvre is increasingly recognized for its radical vision, prefiguring contemporary inquiries into identity and the fluidity of gender.
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About the writer: Eva Zanardi is a freelance writer, independent curator, and owner of Visitor Center, a contemporary art gallery located in Newburgh, NY. Her writing has been featured in various publications, including Flash Art, White-Hot Magazine, Widewalls, and Art & Object Magazine, among other international print and online media. Prior to relocating to Upstate NY, Eva founded and directed GR Gallery, which was known for its cutting-edge contemporary art exhibitions in New York City. Additionally, she serves as the President and Senior Advisor of EZartconsultingnyc, a private art consultancy that specializes in modern and contemporary art. Her latest project, In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty, an exhibition Zanardi guest-curated for The Samuel Dorsky Museum, is currently on view until December 8, 2024.
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