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I am Leonor Fini

From 26 February to 22 June 2025

Royal Palace of Milan

piazza Duomo, 12, Milan

Open now from 10:00 to 19:30

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At Palazzo Reale in Milan, from Wednesday, February 26th to Sunday, June 22nd 2025, one of the most important and comprehensive retrospectives ever dedicated to Leonor Fini (Buenos Aires, 1907 - Paris, 1996) is scheduled, a journey into the visionary and rebellious universe of the Italo-Argentinian artist. The exhibition, curated by Tere Arcq and Carlos Martín, is promoted by the Municipality of Milan - Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre, with the support of the Estate of Leonor Fini.Almost a century after her first solo exhibition debut in Milan in the private spaces of Galleria Barbaroux in 1929, Leonor Fini returns to the city with an exhibition that aims to celebrate the eclecticism and genius of a multifaceted artist, in an intellectual journey that intertwines Italy and France, reconstructing the main stages of her artistic career and the influences that have shaped her vision. The exhibition represents a crucial moment to rediscover Fini's figure, shedding new light on her work and revealing its deepest character, today more influential than ever.
Leonor Fini, solitary and rebellious, tackled the themes of contemporary society, ranging from questioning gender and identity to established models of family, masculinity, and femininity. Her paintings are populated by powerful female figures, sphinxes, cat-women, and ambiguous men, enveloped in mysterious and sometimes unsettling atmospheres, where enigma and tragedy dominate. Psychoanalytic explorations inspired by Freud's readings, manifested through representations of dreams and the unconscious. In a journey that includes about 100 works, including 70 paintings, drawings, photographs, costumes, books, and videos, the retrospective offers an in-depth reinterpretation in a contemporary key of the entire work of Leonor Fini, who has crossed the European cultural scene from the 1930s to the end of the century as a protagonist, working on a formal imaginary with a dreamlike tone, unique even among surrealist experiences.
The exhibition I am Leonor Fini, through 9 thematic sections, delves into the artist's imaginary, revealing sources and influences, from the Central European culture of Trieste - a city characterized by the presence of intellectuals such as James Joyce, Rainer Maria Rilke, or Italo Svevo - to the great masters of the past, such as Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, and the Mannerist painters. From them, Fini absorbed lessons on color and the human figure, using them to convey revolutionary messages.
What inspired Leonor Fini's inner world is the contact with Surrealism and its circle of artists and intellectuals, including Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille. Also influenced by Freud's writings, Fini explores the spaces of the mind and dreams, from which mythological and fantastic motifs emerge. Although she never officially adhered to the surrealist movement, the Italo-Argentinian artist contributed to it with a classicist impulse, a result of her Italian education and study of the Renaissance.

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	opens - closes	last entry
monday	Closed now
tuesday	10:00 - 19:30	18:30
wednesday	10:00 - 19:30	18:30
thursday	10:00 - 22:30	21:30
friday	10:00 - 19:30	18:30
saturday	10:00 - 19:30	18:30
sunday	10:00 - 19:30	18:30

I am Leonor Fini

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