Madeline Tourtelot was an American filmmaker based out of the Chicago metropolitan area.
20 Facts About Madeline Tourtelot
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Madeline Tourtelot collaborated on films with notable artists such as John Steinbeck, Emilio Fernandez, Harry Partch, Paul Severson and Edward Bland.
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Madeline Tourtelot founded three artist institutions in the Midwestern United States, and is included in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Madeline Tourtelot studied journalism and worked as a film critic, and a painter, jeweler, photographer, sculptor and printmaker.
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Madeline Tourtelot grew up in a musical family and was drawn to the arts at an early age.
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Madeline Tourtelot eventually studied at a number of institutions around the Midwestern United States, including Smith College, Fish Creek Art Colony, Northwestern University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Design, and the Saugatuck Summer School of Painting.
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Madeline Tourtelot married wealthy Chicago architect Edward Madeline Tourtelot in 1935 at the age of 19.
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Edward Tourtelot helped to finance the openings of several art schools and galleries with Madeline.
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Madeline Tourtelot's met John Steinbeck and Emilio Fernandez in 1947 while studying painting in Mexico.
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Steinbeck and Fernandez were working on the film version of Steinbeck's 1947 novel "The Pearl" and invited Madeline Tourtelot to help with production.
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Madeline Tourtelot went on to become a significant contributor to Chicago's art scene and avant-garde filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960.
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Madeline Tourtelot completed two films; Reflections and One by One in 1955, as well as a series of short commissioned films set to classical music for Chicago's Educational channel in 1956.
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In 1957, Madeline Tourtelot met American composer Harry Partch through Robert Kostka, who was the art director at WTTW-TV in Chicago.
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Madeline Tourtelot collaborated with Chicago jazz musician Paul Severson on The Poet's Return and Two Cats- One Chick.
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Madeline Tourtelot donated part of her land, including two barns, to Peninsula Art Association in 1978.
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Madeline Tourtelot's painting Escape is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Madeline Tourtelot was a long-standing member of Cinema 16, an influential membership film society in New York City, and a critic for Films in Review and Chicago American, in which her writing often revealed her own aesthetic preferences.
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The work starred Madeline Tourtelot and artist Rudolph Seno, who at the time was a sculpture student at the Art Institute of Chicago's Saugatauk Summer school, where Madeline Tourtelot was working.
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The film consists of playful shots that Seno and Madeline Tourtelot captured of one another on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan's southeastern shore, along with shots of local botanical specimen and water.
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Madeline Tourtelot was inspired by the playful imagery of Tourtelot and Seno, which reminded him of the legend of Apollo and Daphne.