Kweiseye is an art criticism blog written by Tom Kwei. If you enjoy this article, browse the archive HERE for more than 60 other critiques of both artists and exhibitions. Any questions/queries/use: tomkweipoet@gmail.com
Leonor Fini would dye her hair gold, blue or orange and attend private viewings and parties dressed as a man or wearing nothing but boots and a cape of white feathers. Leonor Fini produced the first erotic male nude ever painted by a woman. Leonor Fini though now, through whatever wild reason governs popularity, is barely outside her native Argentina. Which is a shame considering the widespread talent of her work, as well as the intriguing thematic thread throughout of fantasy made hyper-real. Both arcane & urbane, Fini’s work is unsettling in its verisimilitude. A Rene Magritte perhaps of a more exotic, sensual persuasion.
But, on the other hand, through its deep, complex wash of autumnal red, there is a majesty here. An exuberant technique that boldly contradicts the passing at the painting’s core. The dress is just wonderful, a detailed concoction that shifts and bubbles volcanically. With certain sections rising and establishing themselves around the pale of her body and the deepspace-black of the work’s edges. At once both furnace flamed in certain sections and as subdued as chalky fingerprints in the next – the outcome is intoxicating.
Yet, perhaps, also quite meaningful. As within this summoning of opposites, Fini appears to be suggesting some equanimity, some reason to death. The funeral dress after all appears to be engulfed in what only really can be described as energy. The inference seeming then to be towards the duality of death, how one’s passing in a sense provides new life and opportunities for others in the same world. An existential uncertainty told beautifully through the delicate skill which Fini employs.
Red Vision (1984)
The fiery technique of ‘La Toilette Intutile’ returns 20 years later in ‘Red Vision’, which finds two apparitions encountering each other, with the only recognisable human form of the image having his back turned, ignorantly looking out the window.
For such a fantastical scene, Fini’s eye never strays from the telling body language. On the ground, the young, translucent girl is full of innocence and curiosity. Her guiding hand suggests that perhaps this something she too had just came upon, her eyes our eyes, both transfixed on the hovering demon who takes on a more mythic quality in his smudged, yet perceptive features. His face old, judgemental. The cues here are altogether difficult to take, but the surreal meeting’s effect is not lost. Neither is the unsettling, incongruous nature of the floating form.
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