Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini (born 30 August 1907 in Buenos Aires; died 18 January 1996 in Paris) was a surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author. Quotes in Interview with the muse by Nina Winter (1978) Translated from french into english by Nina Winter A painting is something like a spectacle, a theatre piece in which each figure lives out her part. There is a big difference to me between painting and writing. When I write I am more or less conscious. I can edit and stop and examine. Painting on the other hand, engulfs me completely and, of course, it is painting that I prefer. Paintings, like dreams, have a life of their own and I have always painted very much the way I dream. The images appear before you. You cannot say from where they come and you usually cannot even say what they mean. The images say something to you and that is why you paint. To be a mixture of races and nationalities has always felt positive to me. It gives me the possibility of understanding both the North and the South. I do not identify completely with any culture, but in certain areas I feel connected with one more than another. In literature, for example, I feel a bond with the French writers. Their mentality is perhaps closest to my own Work has always been the center of my existence: not work as something one must do in order to earn money, but as an expression of creativity. Many women, and men too, feel handicapped because they have not found that center, that way of expressing themselves. It is of enormous importance and when one touches that, her life takes on another dimension. In my imagination, as in everyone's, there are elements of fear and horror but also of playfulness and humor. These ingredients do not exist as separate entities, but interweave and balance each other. I never know exactly what speaks to people when they like my paintings, but sometimes I think perhaps it is that. Or perhaps it is simply a vitality they find in the paintings which is really their own vitality. It happens to be passing through me when I paint, a kind of life force, but it belongs to all of us. I grew up in a cultivated bourgeois house, but "culture" was something that was meant to stay in books or on the table. It was never conceived as something that penetrates and actually becomes the person herself. As soon as I began painting what was in my head, the people around me were shocked. Things acceptable to read or talk about were repugnant when they came to life. So in my immediate family atmosphere there was a strange contradiction between worldliness and provincialism and it was this contradiction that caused me to rebel. I wanted to integrate the "culture" that surrounded me with my own universe inside. I always imagined I would have a life very different from the one that was imagined for me, but I understood from a very early time that I would have to revolt in order to make that life. Now I am convinced that in any creativity there exists this element of revolt. Quotes about External links Leonor Fini on Wikiart.org Her work at CFM Gallery Biography at the Gallery Minsky (and pictures) Ten Dreams Galleries Category:1907 births Category:1996 deaths Category:Argentine painters