1. Katherine Linn Sage, usually known as Kay Sage, was an American Surrealist artist and poet active between 1936 and 1963.
25 Facts About Kay Sage
1. 2.
Kay Sage was the sister-in-law of Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte, wife of industrialist Edoardo Agnelli of the Agnelli family.
3.
Kay Sage's father, Henry M Sage, was a state assemblyman the year after her birth and later was a five-term state senator.
4.
Kay Sage attended a number of schools, including the Foxcroft School in Virginia, where she became a lifelong friend of the heiress Flora Payne Whitney.
5.
Kay Sage particularly enjoyed painting outdoors in the Roman Campagna with teacher Oronato Carlandi and fellow students.
6.
In December 1936, as she prepared to leave Italy and move to Paris, Kay Sage had her first solo art exhibit, six oil paintings shown at the Galleria del Milione in Milan.
7.
Kay Sage moved to Paris in March 1937 and rented a luxurious apartment there.
8.
Kay Sage exhibited six of her new oils in the Salon des Surindependants show at the Porte de Versailles in the fall of 1938.
9.
Several stories are told about Kay Sage's meeting with her future husband, Surrealist artist Yves Tanguy.
10.
Tanguy at the time was married to Jeannette Ducroq, but they were separated, and he and Kay Sage immediately fell in love.
11.
Kay Sage, still well off, was generous with her money and the group of impoverished artists badly needed such support, but some resented her wealth and what they felt was a haughty attitude that fitted her former title of "Princess" all too well.
12.
Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II, and Kay Sage sailed back to the United States a month later.
13.
Kay Sage arranged for Tanguy to have a solo show at the New York gallery of Pierre Matisse, son of the famous painter Henri Matisse, a month after he arrived.
14.
Kay Sage had her own solo show, her first in the United States, at the same gallery in June 1940.
15.
Kay Sage did the bulk of her mature work between 1940, when she married Tanguy, and 1955, when he died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage.
16.
Kay Sage's work was regularly included in national exhibits, won prizes, and was sold to major art museums.
17.
In 1943, Kay Sage's work was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.
18.
Kay Sage had several solo shows at the galleries of Julien Levy and, beginning in 1950, Catherine Viviano in New York.
19.
Kay Sage, according to friends' accounts, made no response to her husband's aggression except to try to persuade him to go home.
20.
Friends said that Tanguy did not like Kay Sage's painting and felt jealous of the fame that came to her.
21.
However contentious or abusive their relationship was, Kay Sage was devastated by Tanguy's death.
22.
Kay Sage did fewer new paintings after Tanguy died, partly because of her depression and partly because of her decreasing eyesight due to cataracts.
23.
Kay Sage wrote four short plays and an unpublished autobiography, China Eggs.
24.
Kay Sage consistently identified herself as a Surrealist, and authors who have written about her usually do so as well.
25.
Kay Sage renders her forms in meticulous, photographic detail, using a gray-green-ochre palette that Tessier describes as "reminiscent of the sulphurous light before a thunderstorm".