- Florine Stettheimer
Florine Stettheimer (August 19, 1871 - May 11, 1944) was an American artist. She has been described as "a Deco-influenced early Modernist who’s never really gotten her due". [Mulcahy, Susan, [http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/11473 "Columbian Art: How a university bequest can go wrong"] , "
New York Magazine ", March 14, 2005. Retrieved December 15, 2006]Stettheimer was born in
Rochester, New York to a wealthy family. She spent much of her early life traveling, studying art in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland. She studied for three years in the mid-1890s at the Art Students League in New York, but came into her own artistically upon her permanent return to New York after the start ofWorld War I . In October 1916, the only one-person exhibition of her work during her lifetime took place at New York's Knoedler & Company. She exhibited 12 "high-keyed, decorative paintings", none of which were sold. [Morgan, Lee Ann, [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n2_v55/ai_18533939 "The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer"] , "Art Journal ", Summer 1996. Retrieved December 16, 2006]Cushioned by family resources, Stettheimer refrained from self-promotion and considered her painting "an entirely private pursuit". She intended to have her works destroyed after her death, a wish defied by her sister Henrietta, her
executor . [Naves, Mario, [http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/14/sept95/naves.htm "Florine Stettheimer: Manhattan Fantastica"] , "The New Criterion ", September 1995. Retrieved December 16, 2006]Stettheimer's privileged position pervades her work. As one critic has written, "money she regarded as a birthright, decidedly not something to be flaunted in the shape of a dozen yachts, but rather to be used as a palliative against the more unpleasant aspects of the world outside... In this frame of mind, she felt free to depict life as a series of boating parties, picnics, summertime naps, parades and strolls down Fifth Avenue." [Winkfield, Trevor, [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n1_v84/ai_17803663/pg_1 "Very Rich Hours - Artist Florine Stettheimer"] , "
Art in America ", January 1996. Retrieved December 16, 2006]She created the sets and costumes for the 1934 production of "
Four Saints in Three Acts ", an opera byVirgil Thompson with a libretto byGertrude Stein . Her designs, which usedcellophane in innovative ways, proved to be the project for which she was best known during her lifetime. [Danforth, Ellen Zak, [http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.stetthe.con.html Florine and Ettie Stettheimer Papers] , Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Collection of American Literature, September 1987. Retrieved December 16, 2006]She assisted her sister Carrie in the creation of the Stettheimer Dollhouse, now in the collection of the
Museum of the City of New York . The house is a whimsical depiction of an upper-class residence, filled with works by Stettheimer's artist friends, includingWilliam Zorach ,Alexander Archipenko , andGaston Lachaise . [Raynor, Vivien, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7D7113FF937A15753C1A965958260 "Art: A Rogues' Gallery of Artists and Esthetes] , "The New York Times ", October 14, 1993. Requires registration; retrieved December 16, 2006]Stettheimer has been the subject of
retrospective s at institutions including theMuseum of Modern Art (in 1946) and theWhitney Museum of American Art (in 1995).References
Further reading
Print biographies
* Bloemink, Barbara J., "The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer",
Yale University Press , 1995.
* Tyler, Parker, "Florine Stettheimer: A Life in Art", Farrar, Straus, 1963.Theses
* Liles, Melissa M., "Florine Stettheimer: A Re-Appraisal of the Artist in Context," Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 1994.
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