Creative and rebellious, while still a young woman Leonor Fini’s left her hometown Trieste and moved to Paris. Here she met some of the main figures of Surrealism, including Victor Brauner, Salvador Dalí, Paul Éluard, and Max Ernst, and took part in several group shows but never officially joined the movement. Fini was drawn to Surrealism by her interest in the imaginary world of the unconscious, expressed in her work through dreamlike visions with subtle erotic subtexts. She believed that everyday reality could reveal itself to be strange and marvelous, that by opening one’s eyes and observing carefully revealed things to be far from commonplace and immediately comprehensible. Fini’s pictorial universe is often gloomy but populated by groups of extraordinary, fantastical creatures. The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes offers a glimpse of it. The provocative protagonist is surrounded by a group of sphinxes, half women half lions, that seem to have just finished a feast. Their lascivious glances and the remnants of the banquet, clear sexual symbols, suggest a dark and transgressive landscape.