Léonor Fini Watercolor Print From Le Temps De La Mue

Original watercolor etching from the book Le temps de la moue by Leonor Fini. Surrealist print Signed and numbered in pencil by the artist n° 94/135. Framed work, the dimensions are those of the frame. I have other prints by the artist. Leonor Fini was born in Buenos Aires on August 30, 1907. She spent her childhood in Trieste with her mother, her grandparents and her uncle. The Braun family is closely linked to the Trieste intelligentsia: Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba and James Joyce. She did not attend any art school and her training was entirely self-taught. Hence, undoubtedly, the difficulty of identifying it with a particular current of contemporary art, its evolution having above all been marked by elective affinities and by its own “imaginary museum”. She exhibited for the first time at the age of seventeen, in Trieste, during a collective exhibition and, at the same time, during a stay in Milan, she met the painters Funi, Carra, Tosi and discovered the School of Ferrara, Lombardy, as well as the Italian Mannerists. In 1931, Leonor left her family and settled in Paris where, the following year, she presented her first personal exhibition at the Galerie Bonjean, of which Christian Dior was the director. She became friends with Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Georges Bataille, Max Jacob, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, without ever belonging to the surrealist group. In 1936, she made her first trip to New York where she exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery and participated in the famous exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism" at the Museum of Modern Art and in 1939 she organized for her friend Leo Castelli a exhibition of furniture by surrealist artists such as herself, Dali, Meret Oppenheim, Max Ernst at the René Drouin gallery, Place Vendôme. As the Second World War approached, she left Paris with her friend Mandiargues, spent part of the summer of 1939 with Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington in their house in Ardèche, then went to live in Arcachon with Salvador and Gala Dali. In 1940, she lived in Monte-Carlo where she mainly painted portraits, an activity she continued until the early sixties. Her favorite portraits are those of her friends: Anna Magnani, Maria Felix, Suzanne Flon, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Leonora Carrington, Meret Oppenheim, Jean Genet, Jacques Audiberti, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante. In 1941, she met Stanislao Lepri, Italian consul in Monaco, whom she encouraged to become a painter. When Rome was liberated in 1943, she moved in with him. Back in Paris in 1946, she found her old apartment on rue Payenne. In 1952, a crucial meeting: that of the Polish writer Constantin Jelenski with whom she would henceforth share her life. The post-war years will remain for the general public those of Leonor Fini's entry on the stage: creation of masks, participation in numerous costume balls, sets and costumes for The Crystal Palace by Georges Balanchine, at the Opera de Paris, Les Demoiselles de la Nuit by Roland Petit, at the Marigny theater, L'Enlèvement au Sérail, at La Scala in Milan as well as for plays in collaboration with Jean Mercure, Jacques Audiberti, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, Jean Le Poulain . In the summer of 1954, she fell in love with a very wild place, in which she felt in perfect harmony. Near Nonza, in Corsica, she settled in an old Franciscan monastery in ruins where she now paints every summer. Passionate about literature and poetry, Leonor illustrated more than fifty works, including the works of Charles Baudelaire, whom she deeply admired, those of Paul Verlaine, Gérard de Nerval, and Edgar Allan Poe. At the same time, she continued to create sets and costumes for opera and theater: “Tannhaüser”, at the Paris Opera (1963), “Le Concile d'Amour” by Oscar Panizza, at the Théâtre de Paris (1969). and also for the cinema: “Romeo and Juliet” by Renato Castellani (1953), “A Walk with Love and Death” by John Huston (1968). Many writers and painters have devoted monographs, essays and poems to him: Paul Eluard, Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Praz, Max Ernst, Yves Bonnefoy, Constantin Jelenski, Jean-Claude Dedieu. At the beginning of 1960, Leonor Fini moved to Paris, in an apartment on rue de la Vrillière, between the Palais Royal and Place des Victoires. She lived there, surrounded by her friends and her cats, as well as in her house in Saint-Dyé-sur-Loire, in Loir-et-Cher, until her disappearance on January 18, 1996. source: leonor-fini. com