Katherine Sophie Dreier

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Katherine Sophie Dreier, around 1910

Katherine Sophie Dreier (born September 10, 1877 in Brooklyn , New York ; † March 29, 1952 ) was an American painter , art patron and art collector . Together with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray , she co-founded the New York art association Société Anonyme Inc. and a member of the artist group Abstraction-Création . Dreier was a representative of abstract painting .

life and work

Dreier was the youngest of the five children of Dorothea Adelheid and Theodor Dreier, emigrants of German origin from Bremen . The father was a successful industrialist in the iron trade. The three sisters, Dorothea, Margaret and Mary, like Katherine, were active in social reform and politics and were interested in modern art; the sister Mary Dreier played a leading role in the suffragette movement .

Dreier studied at the Brooklyn Art School and the Pratt Institute . Between 1907 and 1914 she lived mainly in Paris , where she continued to study art, bought art, made contacts with European artists and took part in her first group exhibitions in Frankfurt am Main , Leipzig , Dresden and Munich . In Paris she visited Gertrude Stein's salon and read the published in German in 1912 writing Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky . With the outbreak of the First World War she finally returned to the USA. In New York in 1916 Dreier became a member of the Society of Independent Artists , where she met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the protagonists of the New York DADA . Along with Duchamp and Man Ray, she founded in her apartment in the April 29, 1920 Manhattan , the Société Anonyme Inc. as an organization to promote modern art in the United States.

Katherine Dreier's life goal was to transform her country house in Redding , Connecticut into an extensive museum for modern art and to merge the collection of the Société Anonyme with her private collection. In addition, she contacted Yale University in order to unite the art archive of the Yale University Art Gallery with her project. In October 1941 she sent the collection of Société Anonyme Inc. to New Haven . But the hoped-for government support did not materialize due to the entry of the USA into World War II , and their museum project threatened to fail. Dreier was soon forced to sell their house in Redding. After the war ended, she moved to a new home in Milford , Connecticut. In April 1946 she began again with her efforts to revive the Société Anonyme and to merge her own collection with that of Yale University, but the university blocked all actions by Dreier and Duchamp and unceremoniously banned the distribution of the catalog that had already been printed because the name “Yale “Appeared on it. In 1948 Dreier and Duchamp produced a catalog of the collection on their own responsibility. But Dreier's dream of having his own museum ultimately failed. Unnoticed by the public, Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp declared the Société Anonyme for dissolution on April 30, 1950, on the 30th anniversary of their first group exhibition.

Dreier died in 1952 at the age of 74 and was buried in the family burial site in Green-Wood Cemetery , Brooklyn .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1911: Doré Galleries, London (solo exhibition).
  • 1913: Armory Show , New York.

Publications

  • Shawn the dancer . Foreword by Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard; Introduction by Hans Hildebrandt, photographs by Ralph Hawkins. Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1933
  • Three Lectures on Modern Art . Kennikat Press, first published in 1971, ISBN 0-8046-1423-7

See also

literature

  • Ruth L. Bolan: The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America (Yale University Art Gallery) . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-10921-4

Web links

Commons : Katherine Sophie Dreier  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b William Clark: Katherine Dreier and the Société Anonyme. In: Variant 14. Variant art magazine, 2001, accessed October 17, 2012 (English).
  2. ^ Tomb in the Find a Grave database . Accessed June 30, 2020 (English).
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personal data
SURNAME Threesome, Katherine Sophie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Threesome, Katherine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter, art patron and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City, USA
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 1952
Place of death Brooklyn , New York City, USA