5 good reasons, to see Leonor Fini at the SCHIRN

Although today Leonor Fini is considered one of the outstanding women artists of the 20th century, her work has to date never gone on show in its full breadth in Germany. “Leonor Fini. Magic Surreal” is the first major Fini retrospective here, and also one of the most extensive international presentations of her oeuvre ever. The exhibition brings together works straddling about 70 years and even includes pieces that are premiering publicly.

Meaning it is a special opportunity to discover an artist who was exhibiting internationally as long ago as the 1930s and moved firmly in the midst of the European avant-garde. But in the grand art historical narratives for many years she featured only as a figure on the margins. This retrospective changes all that: Here, Fini at long last herself takes center stage.

Leonor Fini would hardly have been interested in obeying prescribed roles, be it in life or in her art. In her images she questions traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, and instead creates self-determined female figures, androgynous creatures, and alternative role models. Emancipation, gender roles, eroticism, and fluid identities are all themes that run through her work.

Today, much of it seems amazingly contemporary. The questions of identity, gender, and self-determination that occupy us more than ever at present all resonate in surprising ways in Fini’s decades-old pieces. And yet her works cannot be reduced to unequivocal messages. Possibly, this is precisely why they are so topical: Fini presents identity as an open, mutable, and contradictory quality.

Fini develops her very own cosmos, somewhere between dream, myth, fantasy, and theater. Her images are beautiful and enigmatic, at times uncanny – and populated by sphinxes, priestesses, witches, and fantastic hybrid creatures. Here, the familiar combines with the strange, reality with the imagination.

It’s best if we did not reveal here what exactly is going on in these mysterious sceneries. As Fini’s images thrive precisely on the fact that they cannot immediately be deciphered. And it’s therefore best to stand in front of them for yourself, look carefully, and allow yourself to be slightly entranced by them.

Whoever thinks that for Leonor Fini art ended on the canvas is far off the mark. Leonor Fini was a woman of many talents. She illustrated books, designed stage sets and costumes for both theater and film, and made her own appearance a part of art. She was with her extravagant costumes and disguises forever re-staging herself; famous photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dora Maar, and Cecil Beaton captured her metamorphoses. For Fini, art and life merged effortlessly. And she also made an impact on the world of fashion.

The exhibition therefore presents Fini not only as a painter but also as a designer, a master of metamorphosis, and a flamboyant avant-garde figure. In short, as an artist whose world was far larger than her canvases.

Dalí, Magritte, Ernst, Breton – to this day, the history of Surrealism tends to be written as a history of men. Leonor Fini knew this “Boys Club” up close: She moved in Surrealist circles and participated in important exhibitions, but never wanted to officially joint the group around André Breton. Its dogmas and hierarchies and in particular the role women were frequently accorded in it, were quite simply not for her.

Instead, Fini took the liberty of developing her own visual language. There, Surrealist ideas meld with completely different influences, from the Renaissance and Symbolism to mythology and magic. Anyone whose first thought when the talk is of Surrealism is of Dalí’s melting watches or Magritte’s mysterious everyday scenes will discover a completely different side to it in Fini’s work: the perspective of an artist who was definitely at the heart of things and yet consistently made the rules herself.

OK, we had intended to provide five reasons. But it would simply not be in order not to mention Fini’s cats. At times, she lived with as many as 20 feline friends, and they regularly occur in her works, guarding her surreal world. Added to which, they are incredibly sweet. There’s hardly any need to argue further…