All language subtitles for Provocative paintings of Leonor Fini

This week's master to inspire you is
Argentine -born Italian artist

Leonore Fini.

She was a painter, designer,
illustrator, and author who lived

1907 and 1996.

Fini lived her life like a work of art,
breaking every rule except for

her own.

She was a fearless female artist with
high intelligence and extreme creative

power.

Although she had no formal artistic
training, it is remarkable how

well she was technically skilled.

Leonore Feeney can be considered the
wildest.

and the most daringly liberated 20th
century women artists who refused to be

placed in any category, especially
having the label of women artist.

Although she exhibited with major
surrealist artists for two decades, she

considered herself a surrealist.

She believed that artistic expression
must constantly be open to inspiration

imagination. In several of her self
-portraits, she presents women as

sphinx, sexually dominant, and cat -like
goddess, who are the

masters of lovers and landscapes.

Fini was born in a broken family and
moved with her mother to Italy when she

18 months old.

During her childhood, she was expelled
from various schools for being

rebellious. An eye disease in her early
teens forced her to wear

bandages on both eyes.

After recovering, she decided to become
an artist.

She moved to Paris when she was 24 years
old. A year later, she had her first

exhibition at a gallery that was
directed by Christian Dior.

Her work caught on fast.

She had a major exhibition in New York
when she was 29 years old.

From then on, her life became like a
theater.

She established herself as a woman
artist in a man's world and invented

on her own terms.

She reflected her personal experiences
in her art through exploring the

masculine and feminine, dominance and
submission, eroticism and humor.

In personal life, Feeney did not part
with her ex -lovers and continued

living with them even as a new lover
moved in and took their place in her

Thus, she became a modern version of a
woman's right to cultivate and nurture

in -house male harem.

Many of her canvases reveal the
interplay between the dominant female

passive male, where the female takes the
form of the sphinx to which Leonore

identified with.

Feeney's creations went beyond the
medium of painting and embraced theatre,

ballet, illustrations and costumes.

She designed for the Paris Opera as well
as over 70 productions at various

theaters in Paris between 1946 and 1969.

Leonor Feeney is considered a great
contributor to the feminist movement.

Although she is perceived as a female
icon, sadly her eccentric lifestyle,

open sexuality,

and bohemian Parisian society life has
diverted attention away

from her artworks.

The Art Dealers Association of America
considers her the most

undervalued artist of the 20th century.

Despite the imprint she left on those
who knew her like thousands of women

artists, Leonor Feeney's name has
disappeared from the list of art history

following her death in 1996 in Paris.