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Friday 30 August 2024, 18.30

introduction by Elettra Maria Spolverini
conversation with Alessandro Marinuzzi and Massimo Premuda

Still from the documentary film on Leonor Fini Mais où est Leonor?, 2009, (courtesy Videoest)

Friday 30 August at 18.30 at Studio Tommaseo in via del Monte 2/1, on the anniversary of Leonor Fini‘s birthday (Buenos Aires, 30 August 1907 – Paris, 18 January 1996), Trieste Contemporanea will dedicate to the artist the seventh edition of the Secret Party for Leonor Fini.

The year 2024 with Leonor Fini is marked by the 100th anniversary of André Breton‘s Manifesto of Surrealism (the first Italian edition was published in 1945 in Venice by Edizioni del Cavallino): the very particular surrealism of Leonor, who did not like to be associated with this artistic movement and who felt, rather, closer to Magical Realism, was defined by the brilliant and unpredictable Jean Cocteau ‘unreal realism’, specifying that “everything supernatural is natural for her”.

2024 focus of this Trieste event for Leonor Fini, conceived in 2009 at Trieste Contemporanea and then organised over the years also at Stazione Rogers by the writer and journalist Corrado Premuda – who had very effectively defined Leonor Fini “a character whose life is identified with art, to the point of making her the muse and first spectator of herself” – will be the diverse and multiple expressions of the theatricality of the surrealist painter who grew up and trained in Trieste. Alessandro Marinuzzi, speaking at the Secret Party, will investigate theatre and theatricality, as well as her disguises and experiences as a set designer, costume designer and ballet librettist, which were essential elements of Fini’s entire creative journey. The director from Trieste will intertwine, almost in a ‘testimony behind-the-scenes’, these interests of Fini with the biographical research carried out by Premuda and the narrative and theatrical texts written by him on the character Leonor Fini. This attempt to reconstruct the genesis of the special research, study and collection devoted by Premuda to the artist will start from books and documents on Leonor Fini’s life, artistic works and literary and theatrical ‘variations’ preserved in the Premuda Fund, donated last summer to Trieste Contemporanea Library. The event on 30 August will be opened by the director of Trieste Contempornea Library Elettra Maria Spolverini who will converse with the curator from Trieste, Massimo Premuda, on the updates and numbers of this precious book and documentary fund, which has been enriched during the year with acquisitions and donations of texts and documents: the Party will therefore be an opportunity to view the new additions – of particular interest the new contributions from the Roman archive of Giovanna Stuparich Criscione – and to thank the numerous contributors.