The Female Gaze

“HEAD OF A lioness, mind of a man, bust of a woman, torso of a child, grace of an angel, and discourse of the devil.” Thus did the art dealer Julien Levy, impresario of the Surrealists in 1930s New York, describe the artist Leonor Fini. His evocation of a hybrid, fantastical creature, at the same time beautiful and frightening, squares with much of what her contemporaries said about her. Fini, whose paintings conjure an imaginative universe in which female power and sexuality reign supreme, was both a maker of art and a subject of art. As one of her biographers put it, “She was her own best muse.” With her outrageous yet fashionable outfits, penchant for tart and quotable remarks, and fierce independence of mind, Fini was a legendary figure in the cultural landscape of Paris from the 1930s until her death at 89 in 1996.

While she drew no boundaries between art