Commemorating the long and close relationship between Leonor Fini and Fabrizio Clerici is the immense exhibition at the Mart di Rovereto, curated by Denis Isaia and Giulia Tulino, in collaboration with the Archivio Fabrizio Clerici.

Fini and Clerici were painters, illustrators, set and costume designers, and they forged a friendship over shared aesthetic and cultural references. The two met in Paris in the 1930s and together were part of the European and American intellectual circles, establishing an unbreakable bond destined to last a lifetime.

Part surrealists, part metaphysicians, definitely fantastical, Fini and Clerici were not participants in fashionable trends, groups, or movements. They experienced art as a private affair, a voice of the self. In the more than 400 paintings, photographs, videos, costumes, and props, the exhibition traces the entire career of both artists, from their formation in the 1920s, their trials and discoveries, through to their artistic maturity.

The chronological layout is interspersed with numerous thematic insights dedicated to the passions shared by the two artists. In the exhibition itinerary, Fini and Clerici’s work is alternated with the works of their teachers, the likes of Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Arturo Nathan, and Bruno Croatto, as well as their fellow travellers, such as Stanislao Lepri, Eugène Berman, and Pavel Tchelitchew, and their heirs, such as Enrico d’Assia and Eros Renzetti.

In a dazzling itinerary studded with extensive picture galleries, themed rooms, and original juxtapositions, the curators strive to reconstruct the story of a rare, free, exuberant friendship, a precursor of the times, although not outside of any particular time. In art as in life - which represents an indissoluble whole - Fini and Clerici conveyed an alternative way of seeing reality, in which hybrid beauties and fantastic creatures transcend all categorisation and convention.