La Grande Parade Des Chats

On 1stDibs, there are several options of la grande parade des chats available for sale. Finding the ideal Surrealist examples of these works for your living room, whether you’re looking for small- or large-size pieces, is no easy task — start by shopping our selection today. These items have been produced for many years, with earlier versions available from the 20th Century and newer variations made as recently as the 20th Century. If you’re looking to add la grande parade des chats that pop against an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include that feature elements of beige and more. Frequently made by artists working in lithograph, archival paper and etching, all of these available pieces are unique and have attracted attention over the years.

Prices for pieces in our collection of la grande parade des chats start at $650 and top out at $11,454 with the average selling for $800.

Leonor Fini was the life of the party during the French Surrealist movement. A socialite with connections to some of the movement's biggest names, Fini was also an astoundingly gifted artist in her own right. In fact, many consider her to be the most fiercely independent female artist of the 20th century. A theatrical personality, Fini created prints, paintings and drawings that are widely revered for their sensuous qualities and raw energy.

Fini's life started off in a dramatic fashion, which was perhaps a portent of things to come. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1907, but her parents separated soon after and her mother took her away to Trieste, Italy. Due to her father's attempts to kidnap her, Fini was often dressed as a boy throughout her childhood. 

Fini was surrounded by artistic women in Trieste, and she naturally developed a love for art as well. By the time she was 17, she had become familiar with Renaissance art and Mannerist painting and was exhibiting her own portraits. In 1931, at just 24 years of age, Fini moved to Paris and became acquainted with influential artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlos Carrà. She also met and started a romantic relationship with Surrealist pioneer Max Ernst, who introduced her to others in the movement.

Though she had no formal art education, Fini proved herself to be both technically masterful and creatively exceptional. Her work and her flamboyant personality attracted the attention of many of the 20th century's most celebrated artists and thinkers, including Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus and Jean Genet, just to name a very few. She exhibited her work in many Parisian art galleries, including the gallery of Christian Dior before the fashion icon became a designer.

In the 1950s, Fini continued painting while immersing herself in other artistic and dramatic endeavors, including theater costume and mask design. She also designed posters for the Paris Opera and wardrobes for movies.

Fini continued living and painting in Paris for the rest of her life. She died in 1996.

On 1stDibs, find original Leonor Fini prints, paintings and drawings.

In the wake of World War I’s ravaging of Europe, artists delved into the unconscious mind to confront and grapple with this reality. Poet and critic André Breton, a leader of the Surrealist movement who authored the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, called this approach “a violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism.” Surrealist art emerged in the 1920s with dreamlike and uncanny imagery guided by a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing, which can be likened to a stream of consciousness, to channel psychological experiences.

Although Surrealism was a groundbreaking approach for European art, its practitioners were inspired by Indigenous art and ancient mysticism for reenvisioning how sculptures, paintings, prints, performance art and more could respond to the unsettled world around them.

Surrealist artists were also informed by the Dada movement, which originated in 1916 Zurich and embraced absurdity over the logic that had propelled modernity into violence. Some of the Surrealists had witnessed this firsthand, such as Max Ernst, who served in the trenches during World War I, and Salvador Dalí, whose otherworldly paintings and other work responded to the dawning civil war in Spain.

Other key artists associated with the revolutionary art and literary movement included Man Ray, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim, all of whom had a distinct perspective on reimagining reality and freeing the unconscious mind from the conventions and restrictions of rational thought. Pablo Picasso showed some of his works in “La Peinture Surréaliste” — the first collective exhibition of Surrealist painting — which opened at Paris’s Galerie Pierre in November of 1925. (Although Magritte is best known as one of the visual Surrealist movement’s most talented practitioners, his famous 1943 painting, The Fifth Season, can be interpreted as a formal break from Surrealism.)

The outbreak of World War II led many in the movement to flee Europe for the Americas, further spreading Surrealism abroad. Generations of modern and contemporary artists were subsequently influenced by the richly symbolic and unearthly imagery of Surrealism, from Joseph Cornell to Arshile Gorky.

Find a collection of original Surrealist paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples and more art on 1stDibs.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.