With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Kay Sage
Painting/Drawing
1898 – 1963
- Biography/Description of Work
Surrealist painter married to artist Yves Tanguy and resident of Woodbury from 1941 in an 18th century house filled with Surrealist art. Kay (Katherine Linn) Sage was born in Albany, New York, to a wealthy conservative senator, Henry Manning Sage, and as a child frequently traveled to France and Italiy with her mother. During WWI Sage worked as a translator for the Censorship Bureau from 1917-1918. After the war she returned to Italy to study art, spending time with a group in Rome sketching landscapes. She took classes for a few months in 1924 at the Scuola Liberale delle Belle Arti in Milan, Italy. In 1927 she married an Italian prince leading the life of the idle rich, but became restless with no purpose to her life and left him in 1935 to pursue her art. Living in Paris in 1938, she saw the International Surrealist Exhibit at Galerie Beaux-Arts, which deeply influenced her. With the onset of World War II in 1939, she returned to the States and began an effort to help the Surrealist painters she had met immigrate, beginning with Yves Tanguy. They married in 1940 moving to Woodbury, where they each had a studio space in a converted barn. Her mature work was created during this period, was exhibited nationally and well received by critics.
- Sources view
- http://rustysartists.blogspot.com/2012/12/surrealists.html Uconn database; Rachel Carley; Heller, Jules and Heller, Nancy G., North American Women Artists of the 20th Century: A Biographical Dictionary, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London, 1995, pg. 484-485, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Sage, http://www.sullivangoss.com/kay_Sage/, http://arthistory.about.com/od/names_ss/p/sage.htm, http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/2012/04/30/kay-sage-painter-of-doom-menace-and-post-apocalyptic-dread/, http://kaysagecatalogue.com/, http://whitney.org/Collection/KaySage, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/arts/design/double-solitaire-art-by-kay-sage-and-yves-tanguy-review.html?_r=0, http://www.hollistaggart.com/publications/kay-sage-1898-1963, http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artists/kay-sage, http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=63, http://flux-boston.com/the-women-of-the-surrealist-art-movement/, http://ctartists.blogspot.com/ Kay Sage Art Showing - New York Times - 1940-6-4, Kay Sage Art Showing - New York Times - 1950-2-26, Kay
- Associated Resource(s)