Overview
Italian-Argentine artist Leonor Fini (1907-1996) can be seen as the original artist-celebrity; her self-mythologization was promulgated by some of the 20th century’s most prominent photographers, from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Dora Maar. Exploring her self-fashioning and dressing-up practices in light of recent theories of performativity, this book highlights how Fini’s extension of artistic creative practices, from painted artworks to her self-creation through costumes, masks and fashion, allowed her to become a living artwork to be created and recreated on daily basis. Applying a multisensory methodology, the book explores Fini’s personal theatricality, photographic self-portraits and self-transformative, genderbending, transgressive dressing-up games in relation to surrealist practices, showcasing the hybrid identities that made up Fini's overall character. In three thematic sections - exploring her theatrical performances at balls, her self-fashioning in photographic and painted portraits, and her becoming-other through dressing-up - the book charts the artist's personal and creative development, the interaction between her paintings and self-creation and her increasing self-empowerment through dressing-up. With over 100 visually-striking colour illustrations, the book analyses and highlights some of Fini's most outstanding performances together with her paintings and self-portraits. Kollnitz argues that the way these identities were represented in the celebrity press compromised Fini’s critical reception as an artist, and how more broadly patriarchal objectification of fashionable women artists has the potential to jeopardise their professional agency. In contrast, this book showcases Fini’s self-fashioning as a tool of artistic and personal empowerment as well as an intrinsic part of her art production. In doing so, the book gives voice to the significance of self-mythologisation for artists to whom identity is fluid and plural.
Full Product Details
Author: Andrea Kollnitz (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 2.60cm
, Length: 23.60cm
Weight: 0.846kg
ISBN: 9781350212589
ISBN 10: 135021258
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 12 June 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Elegantly written and deeply researched, this book will fascinate all those interested in the histories of art, photography, fashion and costume. Containing unseen images of this fascinating and elusive artist, it makes an important contribution to theories of self-performance, queer identities and gender; its rich content will inspire new generations of surrealists, Fini fans, and anyone who adores dressing-up. * Christopher Breward, Director of National Museums Scotland, UK * An urgent contribution to the field of women artists and surrealism, this book offers a detailed and illuminating analysis of Fini’s art and life, conceived as a constant process of becoming embodied in elaborate and empowering practices of evocation, transfiguration, self-imagination and, above all, transformative self-performance. * Patricia Allmer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, University of Edinburgh, UK * Becoming Leonor Fini is a smart, beautiful and compelling book. Bringing extraordinary images and archival material together through elegant prose and cogent argument, Kollnitz makes sense of the costumed theatricality of Fini's self-performance without losing sight of its mercurial mutability. It is destined to be a classic. * Marsha Meskimmon, Emerita Professor of Transnational Art and Feminisms, Loughborough University, UK *
Author Information
Andrea Kollnitz is professor of Art History and head of the Art History Department, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her current research is focused on the self-fashioning of the avant-garde artist; transnational perspectives on Nordic avant-garde art, fashion photography and caricature. She is co-editor, with Marco Pecorari, of Fashion, Performance and Performativity (2021), and, with Louise Wallenberg, of Fashion and Modernism (2018).
