Leonor Fini prototipo di una specie: Les Finiens. Dalla rottura con la critica italiana all’affermazione dei Fantasts negli Stati Uniti (Roma-New York 1943-1949)

The article analyzes Leonor Fini’s activities when she settled in Rome at the end of 1943 at Palazzo Altieri. This short period is important for the influence and for the exchanges between artists defined Italian surrealists, fantastic or post-metafisici close with Fini. In fact Leonor Fini will be considered leader of the Italian surrealists in 1949 when she appear in the catalogue for the exhibition Twentieth-century Italian Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the catalogue the curators, Alfred H. Barr Jr. and J. T. Soby, invented the word «fantasts» (fantastici) to describe the Italian surrealist group. At MoMa, the «fantasts» close to Leonor Fini were Fabrizio Clerici, Stanislao Lepri, and Giuseppe Viviani. The article also aims to analyse the essays on Fini included in the text: Leonor Fini par Edmond Jaloux, Paul Éluard, Alberto Moravia, George Hugnet, Charles Henri Ford, Mario Praz, Alberto Savinio (Sansoni, Roma, 1945) written while Fini lived in Rome and her work was recognized as a pioneering for Italian artists defined «fantastici».