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The text about Leonor Fini will be a very personal one. I have said before, not having the intention to give some objective information. I merely focus on my experience of the artist. As special the case now we are coming down to Leonor Fini.
When I was a young girl I already had two lovely posters of her hanging on the wall of my room, without even having the faintest idea who she was.

My parents remained a long life married couple, but living together underneath one and the same roof was, right on from the start, not their cup of tea. They had, so to say a L.A.T. avant la lettre and that’s how my brother and I commuted between the house of my mother near the Nord Sea coast and that of my dad at one of the Amsterdam canals. This was a huge place with the usual front an back house and only partly inhabit at that time. And so it could happen, without knowing his daughter had done so, I took the liberty to install myself in a room at the attic. Which I made comfortable and cozy by filling it up with treasures I picked up in the rest of the house. I could easily do so, because my dad happened to be quite a collector. Lots of things caught his eager eyes. Beautiful art pieces, but also all sort of bizarre props.
For as long as the new found treasures were having his full attention, they were proudly placed on spots were everybody could enjoy them, but after a while they merciless disappeared to the basement. Which was filled up to the top with items fallen out of his grace. My brother and I called it ’the cabinet of doctor Calligari’ (a figure from literature who had a sort of greapy museum of curiosities.)
Entering the shimmering basement of the very old house at the canal always felt like entering a spooky and forbidden fairytale spot. But for such a curious gold digger as myself it was pure paradise.
I am pretty convinced the passionate flair for hidden treasures what later in my life - when I had become an antiquarian  - came in so handy, was aroused in the basement of doctor Caligari.

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