Leonor Fini

The Leonor Fini exhibition brings together nearly 200 paintings, drawings, photographs, masks and objects at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. The retrospective explores a body of work in which self-portraiture, metamorphosis and role-playing continually shift the boundaries of identity.

Sphinxes, witches, fairies and chimeras populate the images of this artist, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1907. Her androgynous figures and theatrical settings draw as much on Italian Mannerism as on French Symbolism. These influences inform a world in which the body and costume become ways of inventing new personas and different power dynamics.

Although close to several Surrealists, including Max Ernst, Paul Éluard and Victor Brauner, Leonor Fini refused to be defined by any movement. Featuring rarely shown works and some never exhibited before, the exhibition traces this independence across several forms of artistic expression. Developed with the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the Paris exhibition is a distinct iteration of the German presentation.

Practical information
- Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm.
- Temporary exhibitions open late on Thursdays, until 9:30pm.