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Activity Guide by Kate Kwasneski
Intern, �鶹��ý College Museum of Art

Look and Learn

Leonor Fini lived an interesting life, moving from Argentina to Italy to France. She was never actually trained as an artist, but she created beautiful Surrealist artworks. Surrealism took everyday objects and made them surreal or strange through the way they were combined or the way they were painted. In the artwork below, Fini combined a person and a few different kinds of animals, all of which are ordinary, and combined them to create a strange creature.

Surrealists often used the idea of a terrifying female monster in their work, but Fini took this idea and created female monsters who were powerful but not necessarily bad or scary. Most of her artwork focused on women or girls, and it showed them as powerful, strong, and mysterious.

This print by Fini is called Chimera. In Greek mythology, a chimera was an animal with a lion, goat, and snake head. This chimera looks more like a sphinx, which was a woman with a lion’s body and wings. Now, the word chimera can mean any made-up creature with parts taken from more than one kind of animal. What do you think this chimera is doing? Is she protecting or guarding something? Is she ready to attack? Or is she quietly sitting and thinking?

Here is another chimera from the museum’s collection! This one is made up of a rooster combined with a snake. Look at these two artworks. How do they connect the animals together into one creature? How do the colors help or hurt the idea that the combined animals are actually combined?

Imagine

Now it’s time for you to make a chimera! It can be a hybrid of existing creatures or it can be a totally new thing. Think about what animals might combine well together, and why you are choosing them specifically.

This example is combining a barn owl and a fox, making a fox owl! They both live in the woods and eat a lot of the same foods, but they look very different, which makes an interesting creature when they are combined.

This one is a deer panther. In the wild, panthers eat deer, so it’s interesting to think about what kind of animal they would be combined. Do you think this chimera would eat other animals, plants, or both?

Create

Now will you make your chimera? Will you draw, paint, collage or make a sculpture? Whichever method you choose, think about what details will make your chimera special. Feel free to try a few different ways of combining before deciding what your chimera will look like. Try to add as many details as possible, and work for quality rather than quickness. Do your best work!

Write

Tell the story of your chimera. How was it created? Where does it live? What does it eat? Are there other creatures of its species, or is it the only one?