LEONOR FINI

The Digitorial for the Exhibition

Self-Portrait with Scorpion, 1938 (Detail)

One artist, many identities. Leonor Fini was a rebel both in her work and in her private life. Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 and raised in Trieste, the self-taught artist created striking depictions of strong women and androgynous figures, often drawing on historical models. Despite her affinity with Surrealism, Fini maintained her independence and developed a distinctive visual language. Dream, myth, transformation, and death are as much a part of her work as her playful use of masks and costumes. At the same time, her works offer a direct entry point to contemporary discourses surrounding emancipation, the reversal of traditional gender roles, and power relations.
Featuring paintings, drawings, photographs, and objects spanning around seventy years of Fini’s work, the SCHIRN exhibition tells the story of one of the most unconventional artists of the twentieth century.

Leonor Fini created numerous self-portraits in which she constantly presented herself in new ways and expressed different facets of her personality. Reflection on her role as a woman and an artist is a central theme in these works. Furthermore, these depictions allude to the fluid nature of human identity, which never fully reveals itself or allows itself to be unambiguously deciphered.

Autoportrait au scorpion, 1938

Leonor Fini stellt sich als Halbfigur vor neutralem Hintergrund dar, den Blick auf die Betrachtenden gerichtet. Sie trägt eine modische Frisur und ein hochgeschlossenes Oberteil, dessen geschlitzte Ärmel an die Mode der Renaissance erinnern. Die kaskadenartige Drapierung weckt Assoziationen mit einer Rüstung oder dem Panzer eines Skorpions. Der Giftstachel eines solchen ragt aus dem Handschuh an ihrer linken Hand. Die Künstlerin inszeniert sich einerseits als kriegerische Amazone, andererseits als Femme fatale – als dämonische Verführerin, die den todbringenden Skorpion wie ein Schmuckstück in ihrer Hand trägt und sich dabei seine vielschichtige Symbolik aneignet: als Sinnbild für Tod und Zerstörung, aber auch als Symbol für ungezügelte Sexualität.

Self-Portrait with Large Collar, 1938

The artist appears in three-quarter profile, with her head tilted and a critical, challenging gaze. Particularly striking are her wild, voluminous hair and the flaring collar with its jagged outer edge and deep neckline. While the exposed, erotically charged neck conveys vulnerability, the sharp edge of the eccentric collar suggests strength and distance. Here, Fini presents herself as both the seduced and the seductress.

Woman Sitting on a Naked Man, 1942

A naked youth sleeps in an idyllic landscape. Sitting pensively atop him, as if he were a trophy, is a woman resembling the artist. Unlike him, she is clothed. The scene recalls the traditional subject of the reclining or sleeping Venus, a theme developed particularly from the Renaissance onwards: here, however, a sleeping Eros takes the place traditionally occupied by the recumbent Venus. Fini reverses the classical distribution of roles, in which the woman is an eroticised creature of nature and the man a man of culture and reason. In this work, the woman embodies agency, while the man embodies passivity and vulnerability.

In the Tower (Self-Portrait with Constantin Jelenski), 1952

The scene has an air of mystery: Fini stands at a light-filled portal and, with one hand raised, looks back at the writer Constantin Jelenski, who follows her as if in a trance. The two had been lovers since 1952 and lived in a ménage à trois with the Surrealist painter and Italian consul Stanislao Lepri. Here, Fini once again reverses traditional gender roles and appropriates the way male artists depicted their female models, often painting them lightly clothed or naked. Fully clothed, she assumes the leading role and guides the largely naked and very youthful-looking Jelenski.

The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes, 1941

An Amazon-like shepherdess stands in the midst of a herd of female sphinxes in an apocalyptic-looking desert landscape. Her skimpy metallic loincloth and leonine hair define her appearance. She embodies female power and a sexuality that is both erotic and menacing. The sphinxes lie at the shepherdess’s feet like harmless grazing animals. Two of them embrace homoerotically. In contrast to this are the scattered fish and other animal bones – the remains of their last meal. In the tradition of the femme fatale, these mythical creatures appear both seductive and threatening.

Ends of the Earth I, 1948

Submerged up to her chest in a muddy, swamp-like lake, Fini appears with a doll-like face, motionless like a marble bust. Large, decaying leaves and animal skulls with seemingly living eyes float on the water. Fini’s reflection in the water, with its dark colouring and piercing gaze, resembles her menacing, animalistic alter ego. Yet at the heart of this seemingly apocalyptic scene lies not so much destruction as life itself: the woman rising from the ‘primordial soup’, with her ample breasts, resembles a primordial vegetal goddess heralding new life.

Surrealism and Fini’s Network

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