'She was a pure creator.' The art world rediscovers Surrealist painter Leonor Fini

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/ [login to see] /leonor-fini-art-basel-surrealism
An overlooked female artist is starting to get her due.

Nearly 30 years after her death, Leonor Fini's captivating, often gender-bending images are attracting renewed attention. She is one of the featured artists at the annual Art Basel fair underway this week in Miami, where many in the art world are gathered. There, San Francisco's Weinstein Gallery has joined with Paris' Galerie Minsky to mount a show of some of her most important work.

Fini, who was born in Argentina before moving as a child to Italy, outlived most of her contemporaries, Surrealist artists like Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte. She died in 1996 at 89 years old.

She is now considered part of that movement, but gallery owner Rowland Weinstein says she wasn't just a Surrealist painter. "She was a pure creator. She continually changed... In that essence, I think she was kind of like Picasso. She loved theater, design, costume design. And she was kind of a genius in all of them."