The Tempest

Argentine-born Surrealist Leonor Fini is best known for her oneiric, macabre dreamscapes, populated by magical hybrid creatures. Refusing to confine herself to a single medium, Fini created drawings, paintings, costumes, furniture, poems, sculpture and illustrations for almost fifty books. Between 1965 and 1966, Fini produced numerous watercolors for an unnamed patron's publication of The Tempest, twenty-two of which were selected for reproduction in the book. These works were created almost a decade after her first known artistic engagement with Shakespeare, when she designed the sets for a 1957 production of The Taming of the Shrew. Through translucent, watery washes of color, Fini imbues each scene with an ethereal atmosphere as apparitions emerge from plumes of smoke and clouds.