Léonor Fini (1907-1996), was born in Italy and was initially influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and by Aubrey Beardsley. Later she joined the Surrealist movement, always returning to certain recurring themes: a mysterious kind of eroticism, androgenous figures, mystical landscapes. Her work took a new direction with her stage designs. She outraged Parisian society with her taste, her extravagance and her parties, many of them in fancy-dress.

Like a doodle from a child’s exercise book, her young “She-Ram” for the 1952 Mouton Rothschild label demonstrates Léonor Fini’s capacity, by the sheer elegance and precision of her drawing, to lift everyday reality into the world of dreams.