Léonor FINI (1908-1996) Born of an Italian mother and an Argentinian father, her childhood and adolescence are spent in Trieste in Italy, with her mother and her maternal family. She did not know her father, who died very early on. In a bourgeois environment, very cultivated, she acquired a cosmopolitan culture. She left her family at 17 to settle in Milan and began to paint, adopting classicism and tonal painting following the example of Carrà. In 1937, she left Italy for Paris and met André Breton and the surrealists. Inspired by their theories, she experimented with "automatic drawing". She befriended Georges Bataille, Victor Brauner, Paul Éluard and Max Ernst without ever joining the group, having no taste, according to her, for meetings or manifestos. It is alone that she explores a dreamlike universe featuring characters with closed eyes (most often women).