LFemale figures are at the centre of Fini’s artistic universe. Unlike the cliché of the ‘woman-child’ so often perpetuated by Surrealist artists, she depicted women as warrior goddesses, creators, and visionaries. Fini’s female protagonists question conventional gender roles and assert their spiritual and physical power. Her depictions of chimeras, sirens, alchemists, and witches combine elements of mythology with a visual language all her own.

A recurring image is that of the sphinx with which Fini identified. Her sphinxes are hybrid creatures with a feline posture, an eroticised female bust, and the faces and luxuriant hair of beautiful young women. In the pictorial tradition drawing on Greek mythology, as well as in Surrealist interpretations, the sphinx often appears as an enigmatic creature confronting the male hero. Fini, by contrast, depicts it as an autonomous female subject embodying power, knowledge, and self-determination.

This pictorial constellation recalls the Greek myth of Endymion – the beautiful youth who was put into an eternal sleep so that the moon goddess Selene could remain united with him forever. But another layer of meaning can also be discerned. The deeply sleeping men are passive rather than active: partly in response to her experience of her macho father during childhood, Fini was interested in a new image of masculinity that could accommodate both sides of her nature. In the context of the political and social upheavals of the twentieth century, this theme also takes on a contemporary historical dimension.

The painting ‘Those Who Are Becoming’ takes up the theme of metamorphosis as a symbol of fluid identity and as a fundamental principle of life. The creatures that appear to emerge from fire and organic structures elude any clear categorisation as human or animal and embody the process of continual transformation and self-creation. Fini’s oil paintings are characterised by a finely nuanced painting style whose soft transitions dissolve the boundaries between bodies and their surroundings.

The witches fly through the air on their broomsticks; some appear menacing, while others are more friendly and humorous. In her etchings, Fini draws on the traditional iconography of witches in the German Renaissance, particularly the works of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien. Like many female artists associated with Surrealism, Fini reinterpreted the figure of the witch in opposition to its traditional portrayal. The demonised and frightening witch gives way to a rebellious and self-determined figure who possesses magical powers of her own.

One of the etchings depicts a sinister witch on a besom. Her mask-like face is framed by angular forms radiating outwards; wing-like protrusions emerge from her back, which is covered in bristly structures. She shares the broom with a plump cat that stares intently at the viewer with its eyes wide open. Another depiction shows a young, elfin witch who rides voluptuously on a flower stalk, while frivolously allowing herself to be penetrated by a phallic pistil. Her body gradually morphs into petals, her hair is partly made of climbing plants, and roots sprout from her limbs. The third witch figure appears threatening. With a distorted, demonic face and two round gnome heads in place of breasts, she rides a thorny broom. She, too, takes on the broom’s characteristics, as her fur-covered body is studded with spines and thorns.

The woman repeatedly appears in Fini’s oeuvre as a weaver of fate, alchemist, spiritual guide, or seer. Such depictions occupy a central place within the imaginary visual worlds created by the artist: as bearers of creative and transformative forces, these female figures seem to govern the cycles of nature – and thus also those of life and death.

Against a dramatic landscape, the female figure appears motionless, almost unreal. Her posture is statue-like. Her rigidity gives the impression that she exists on the border between the world of the living and the realm of myth. Clad in a light-coloured cloak and an orange garment that leaves her round breasts visible, she holds an egg the size of her palm in her hands. Large bird-like creatures with pointed beaks and silvery plumage gather around the woman; the title of the painting identifies them as phoenixes.