Leonor Fini should be better known than she is. Born in Buenos Aires in 1906, she grew up in Italy and moved to Paris at age 24 to commence a brilliant career. She hung out with Salvador Dali and others in the Surrealist crowd, and produced art that was, IMHO, equal to theirs, though she never equaled their reputations. Her personal life was just as eccentric and romantic as Frida Kahlo’s, and, like Frida, she was beautiful and had many lovers, men and women.

True insiders in the Latin American art world have known about her forever, but I only found out about her 10 years ago. And that was by accident – when I read a story about her in a French literary magazine,

Since then, I’ve been a fan, watching for her work at auctions – a very rare phenomenon. I was hoping I could get a small piece at a good price, but those insiders were ahead of me. And when they started buying her pieces, others followed. Now her paintings are beyond my reach.

Here is one of them – called “Rasch, rasch, rasch…” –  featured in one of Christie’s online publications.