In 1950, the Italian artist Bona Tibertelli (1926-2000) married André Pieyre de Mandiargues who brought her into contact with the intellectual avant-garde in Paris. Her talent then flowered in fantasy pieces: mandrake roots taking the form of giants, monstrous sea-shells. As a devout Surrealist she practised “decalcomania” or automatic painting. From 1958, when she moved to Mexico, her work evolved towards abstraction, using new materials like concrete and stucco. She found her greatest fulfilment in a genre devised by the Cubists: collage.

It is worth comparing her voluptuous “She-Ram” for the 1968 Mouton Rothschild label with Léonor Fini‘s design for the 1952 vintage.