The Lost Needle

c. 1937

Léonor Fini
Italian, born Argentina, 1908-1996

On View: Prints and Drawings, Gallery 397

Artist: Léonor Fini
Title: The Lost Needle
Origin: Italy
Date: 1932–1942
Medium: Drawing by Leonor Fini in pen and black ink on cream wove paper, part of a collage by Joseph Cornell with photograph, printed reproduction, printed labels, and graphite on paper label, on Cornell's mat and frame
Inscriptions: Signed on drawing, lower right: "Leonor Fini"; inscribed, lower right, in graphite on paper label: "pour Joseph Cornell / très amicalement / Leonor Fini"; inscribed verso, upper center, in graphite: "property of Joseph Cornell / 3708 Utopia Parkway / Flushing N.Y."; lower left: "photo by / Chas. Henri Ford"; lower right: "fecit / ca. 1937"
Dimensions: 241 × 178 mm (sheet); 348 × 305 mm (mat and frame)
Credit Line: Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
Reference Number: 2018.321
Copyright: © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dickran Tashjian, Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire (Miami Beach, Fla., 1992), pp. 47-48, 50, pl. 14.
Leonor Fini: Peintures (France, 1994), p. 124.
Dawn Ades, with Margherita Andreotti and Adam Jolles, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 138–39, cat. 71 (color ill.).

Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Artistic Collaboration in the Twentieth Century,” 1984-1985, cat. 35, p. 116 (ill.); also Milwaukee and Louisville.

Cornell family. Helen Serger, La Boetie, Inc. New York, by 1979. Sold by Alice Adam, Ltd., Chicago, to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1981; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018.

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