At Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in London, under the visionary curation of Alison M. Gingeras, a provocative exhibition titled “La mort de l’amour” (The Death of Love) is taking place. The show brings together works by 20th-century Surrealist pioneer Leonor Fini (1907–1996) and contemporary Polish artist Aleksandra Waliszewska (b. 1976), inviting viewers into a world where desire, danger, and transformation intertwine.
Dream Logic and Female Identity
The exhibition reveals how both artists boldly blur the boundaries between reality, fantasy, and hallucination. Fini’s rarely seen works and Waliszewska’s new paintings present dream-like scenes in which love and death, seduction and peril become inextricably entangled.
Shared Characters: Their universes are populated by dancing skeletons, fleeting nude figures, ghostly wanderers, reclining dreamers, and, most importantly, feline companions. These figures reflect the complex, dangerous, and always rule-breaking aspects of female identity.
Waliszewska’s dark and mystical aesthetic, combined with Fini’s audacious figures nourished by Freudian symbolism, proves how the Surrealist tradition has evolved in the hands of women artists.
This exhibition does more than simply unite two artists; it creates a powerful and unsettling dialogue that demonstrates how love, even at its most extreme, is inevitably intertwined with death, loss, and transformation.
Artists: Leonor Fini and Aleksandra Waliszewska
Exhibition Title: La mort de l’amour (The Death of Love)
Curator: Alison M. Gingeras
Venue: Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Empress Club, 35 Dover Street, London
Dates: Continues until 20 December 2025
