Want more images or videos?

Request additional images or videos from the seller

1 of 13

Leonor Fini
Portrait of Pao Ying
c. 1960

Name: Portrait of Pao Ying
Brand: Leonor Fini
Rating: 4.8 (10 reviews)

$285,000List Price

About the Item

"Portrait of Pao Ying" is a painting by Surrealist Leonor Fini. The painting is signed lower right, "Leonor Fini". The framed portrait measures 19 7/8 x 14 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. The sitter, Pao Ying (spelled in catalogue raisonne Pao Weng), was a close friend of Leonor Fini. Pao was also an artist, a jewelry designer. This is the only known painting by Fini of a Chinese woman. The frame is original. Leonor Fini (1907 – 1996) was born in Argentina, grew up in Italy, and spent much of her adult life in Paris working alongside such modern masters as Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Balanchine. A self-taught artist, Fini’s work spans many mediums, including drawing, printmaking, costume design, and theatrical sets. As a painter, Fini is typically grouped with European surrealism, although she rejected what she considered the reductive labels of art movements. Nonetheless, Fini’s work engages with the unconscious and includes fantastical scenes with jarring, other-worldly juxtapositions and symbolism. Unlike many surrealists, however, Fini engages deeply with the corporeality of the human body in a way that often subverts gender norms. Fini’s female figures are typically dominant and stoic, while her male figures are eroticized. In other cases, the figures are highly androgynous and eroticized, complicating the way human sexuality is normally presented. Described by many to be particularly tall and commanding in physical appearance with very unusual cat-like eyes, in many ways she was more creaturely than human. Taking the artistic interest in the motif of an animal/human hybrid somewhat literally, she stood as an embodiment of feline transformation and metamorphosis, and came to accurately identify herself with the ancient figure of a Sphinx. Deadly in Greek tradition, whilst benevolent but ferocious in Egyptian stories, the appearance of the mythical creature is symbolic of Fini's love for artifice and nature combined. During her lifetime, Fini’s work was regularly well received and moderately successful. She enjoyed inclusion in the 1936 landmark MOMA exhibition Fantastic, Dada, Surrealism and a show at the Julien Levy gallery in New York. More recently, her art has enjoyed considerably more attention as she undergoes a critical and scholarly re-evaluation. She has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Museum of Sex, New York (2018); the Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco (2008); the Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo (2005); and the Revoltella Museum of Modern Art, Trieste, Italy (2009). Her work is represented in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London, England; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Provenance: Pao Ying, Milan (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection Heather James Fine Art, acquired from the above Exhibition: Milan, Galleria Tommaso Calabro, Leonor Fini. Italian Fury. As dreamed by Francesco Vezzoli, 1 April – 25 June 2022 Literature: R. Overstreet and N. Zuckerman, Leonor Fini Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Vol. II, Zurich, 2021, no. 623, p. 394 (illustrated in colour)

Creator:
Leonor Fini (1908 - 1996, French)
Creation Year:
c. 1960
Dimensions:
Height: 15.5 in (39.37 cm)Width: 10.25 in (26.04 cm)
Medium:
Oil,Panel
Movement Style:
Surrealist
Period:
1960-1969
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Palm Desert, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: 426251stDibs: LU9311726522

Shop All Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini was the life of the party during the French Surrealist movement. A socialite with connections to some of the movement's biggest names, Fini was also an astoundingly gifted artist in her own right. In fact, many consider her to be the most fiercely independent female artist of the 20th century. A theatrical personality, Fini created prints, paintings and drawings that are widely revered for their sensuous qualities and raw energy.

Fini's life started off in a dramatic fashion, which was perhaps a portent of things to come. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1907, but her parents separated soon after and her mother took her away to Trieste, Italy. Due to her father's attempts to kidnap her, Fini was often dressed as a boy throughout her childhood.

Fini was surrounded by artistic women in Trieste, and she naturally developed a love for art as well. By the time she was 17, she had become familiar with Renaissance art and Mannerist painting and was exhibiting her own portraits. In 1931, at just 24 years of age, Fini moved to Paris and became acquainted with influential artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlos Carrà. She also met and started a romantic relationship with Surrealist pioneer Max Ernst, who introduced her to others in the movement.

Though she had no formal art education, Fini proved herself to be both technically masterful and creatively exceptional. Her work and her flamboyant personality attracted the attention of many of the 20th century's most celebrated artists and thinkers, including Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus and Jean Genet, just to name a very few. She exhibited her work in many Parisian art galleries, including the gallery of Christian Dior before the fashion icon became a designer.

In the 1950s, Fini continued painting while immersing herself in other artistic and dramatic endeavors, including theater costume and mask design. She also designed posters for the Paris Opera and wardrobes for movies.

Fini continued living and painting in Paris for the rest of her life. She died in 1996.

On 1stDibs, find original Leonor Fini prints, paintings and drawings.

2010s Surrealist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Linen, Oil, Wood Panel

Alexandra Manukyan
"Effulgent, " Oil Painting, 2022

$3,500 Sale Price

30% Off

H 20 in W 16 in D 0.5 in

"Fuchsia de Mirabilibus" (2023) by Sybiline, Oil Painting, Fairy Flower

Located in Denver, CO

Sybiline's (CAN based) "Fuchsia de Mirabilibus" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a green fairy in a suspended flower. About the Artist: Sybiline is a Canadian art...

Category

2010s Surrealist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Panel

$500

H 10 in W 8 in

More From This Seller

View All

Figure with Blue Eyes

By Nathan Oliveira

Located in Palm Desert, CA

A painting by Nathan Oliveira. "Figure with Blue Eyes" is a figurative painting, oil on canvas in a palette of browns and creams with a pop of blue by Bay Area Figurative artist Nath...

Category

Late 20th Century Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Nathan Oliveira
Figure with Blue Eyes, 1986

$115,000

Girl with Muff

By Robert Henri

Located in Palm Desert, CA

"Girl with Muff" is aa American figurative portrait oil on canvas painting by Robert Henri in 1912. The artwork is 57 1/4 x 38 1/4 inches and, with the frame, is 64 1/4 x 45 1/4 x 2 ...

Category

Early 20th Century American Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

$100,000

Still Thinking About These?

All Recently Viewed

Penelope Gottlieb’s Comic-Style Painting Is a Requiem for a Vanished Flower

This piece may look like Pop art fun, but embedded within is a message of a planet on the brink.

10 Reasons Art Collectors Are Obsessed with Andy Warhol

More than three decades after his death, the prolific Pop artist and cultural icon's body of work continues to captivate. Here's a primer of some of his most notable motifs and mediums.