Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Kerista Fiske

Date

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Art History

Committee Chair

William McKeown

Committee Member

Adriana Dunn

Committee Member

Rebecca Howard

Abstract

This thesis explores how Surrealist artist Leonor Fini employs a version of the ancient Egyptian Sphinx in her paintings Little Hermit Sphinx (1948) and Petit Sphinx Gardien (1943-44). Specifically, Fini reframes the Sphinx’s role as a contemplative guardian presiding over the liminal threshold between life and death. Fini merges the images inspired by the ancient Egyptian Sphinx’s recumbent pose with the Hellenistic Sphinx’s feminine attributes while invoking Hermetic and psychological concepts of transformation and duality. Through analyzing Fini’s Sphinx motif alongside her Surrealist contemporaries—such as Jane Graverol, Frida Kahlo, Paul Delvaux, and Dorothea Tanning—and comparing to those of previous artistic movements, focusing especially on fin de siècle Symbolist artists such as Gustave Moreau and Ferdinand Khnopff, this thesis demonstrates how Fini innovatively restored the Sphinx to its ancient status while modernizing the motif in twentieth-century Surrealist art in order to present an alternative understanding of mortality and femininity.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.”

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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