Florine Stettheimer’s life and art is celebrated with the first comprehensive biography and full reading of her works, released by Hirmer / University Chicago Press

Florine Stettheimer, a Biography

Barbara Bloemink

Release: January 24, 2022

Press Contact: Alexandra Fanning | alex@alexandrafanning.com

NEW YORK, NY––For the first time, an in-depth exploration of the life and work of Florine Stettheimer is released in a comprehensive biography. One of the 20th century’s most significant, progressive, feminist artists, she exhibited in more than forty of the most important museum exhibits and salons to critical acclaim, wrote insightful poetry, gained international praise for her unique costume and set designs, and painted the first nude self-portrait from the perspective of the ‘women’s gaze’.

Stettheimer was among the first artists to document many of the central characters, events and social issues in the  newly modernist Manhattan. She captured the city’s growth as the center of avant-garde cultural life, finance, architecture and entertainment between the World Wars. 

During her first forty years, spent mostly in Europe, the artist studied academic painting and was aware of the earliest modernist styles prior to most American artists. Returning to New York, she and her sisters led a renowned salon for major avant-garde cultural figures including Marcel Duchamp, the Stieglitz circle, and numerous poets, dancers, and writers.

Stettheimer’s work was socially progressive many years before her American contemporaries, conveying her opinions and pointed sexual and political commentary through humorous imagery, the titles of her paintings, and distinct poetry. She painted several identity-issue paintings, addressing African American segregation, Jewish anti-Semitism, fluid sexuality, women’s rights and new independence. All topics that were highly controversial for the time.

Florine Stettheimer, a Biography (Hirmer Publishing/ University of Chicago Press, Hardcover $30.00) written by art historian Barbara Bloemink is the first book to fully document the life, contributions and contextual significance of this multi-media artist. The book will be available for purchase January 24, 2022.

PUBLICATION INFORMATION: 

Florine Stettheimer: A Biography 

Author: Barbara Bloemink

HIRMER Publishers

In English and German, 2000 copies

Distributed: 

In Us: University of Chicago Press

In Europe: HIRMER

in England Thames & Hudson

Specs:

560 pages

110 4-color illustrations

40 black and white illustrations

ISBN-10: 3777438340

ISBN-13: 978-3777438344

Praise for Florine Stettheimer, a Biography

“In this remarkable biography, Bloemink reveals Florine Stettheimer’s determined feminism, subversive social consciousness, artistic significance and her continuing relevance at a critical time for women in the art world.”—Linda Nochlin, author of Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

“For anyone interested in the messy, exhilarating tale of early American modernism, this is essential reading. Bloemink’s new biography provides an intimate, nuanced look at the pivotal role Stettheimer played in fomenting an artistic revolution in the United States. It is the definitive account of one of the era’s great artists.”—Andrew Russeth, former Executive Editor, ARTnews

About the Author

Barbara Bloemink is considered the expert scholar on Florine Stettheimer’s work and has written extensively on the artist and co-curated the 1995 Whitney Museum Florine Stettheimer Retrospective Exhibition. Formerly the director and/or chief curator of five art museums including the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum Cooper-Hewitt, Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, the Hudson River Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She has curated over seventy museum exhibitions, published numerous books and has lectured and taught internationally on art and design. Her latest book, Florine Stettheimer: A Biography will be published January 2022.

She received a Ph.D. from Yale University.