Henri cartier-bresson leonor fini biography

Leonor Fini 30 August — 18 January was an Argentine-Italian surrealist painter, designer, illustrator, and author, known for her depictions of powerful and erotic women. Herminio was a handsome and very wealthy man, but also tyrannical with extreme religious views. He made his young wife very unhappy and, within eighteen months of Leonor's birth, she fled back to Trieste with the child.

As a Catholic, Herminio refused to give Malvina a divorce, which was only granted to her in through an Italian court. Custody battles often involved Fini and her mother in sudden flights and disguises. After recovering, she decided to become an artist. She moved to Milan at the age of 17 and a gallery in Trieste exhibited one of her paintings that year.

Henri cartier-bresson photos

She thereafter received a commission to paint portraits from dignitaries in Milan where she had her first one-woman show at the Galerie Barbaroux in She traveled Europe by car with Mandiargues and Cartier-Bresson where Cartier-Bresson took a photograph, one of his best known, of her naked in a pool with a shaved pubis. Fini had no formal artistic training, but grew up surrounded by the Renaissance and Mannerist styles of Italy.

She worked for Elsa Schiaparelli in the late thirties and early forties and designed the bottle for the perfume "Shocking", basing the shape on Mae West's torso.