Hall of Fame: Leonor Fini

Video: Leonor Fini en Japon, 2005: A Weinstein Gallery Video, 9:23 min., published at YouTube in 2008.

The above video is about opening of Leonor Fini retrospective exhibit at The Bunkamura Museum in Tokyo, Japan in 2005. Paintings on loan from Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco are highlighted. Leonor Fini (1908-1996) born in Buenos Aires, grew up in Italy and lived and worked as a surrealist painter in Paris since app. 1932 until her death in 1996. Glbtq.com writes: “She [Leonor Fini] made a clear distinction between choosing a lesbian lifestyle and the desire to experience the love of another woman. In an interview with Whitney Chadwick in 1982, Fini freely acknowledged her experience of same-sex love, but refused to accept a lesbian identity, remarking, “I am a woman and have had the ‘feminine experience’ but I am not a lesbian.”

In the short video (1:15 min) below you can hear Leonor’s own voice. She is talking in French about, how she makes her drawings.