Lisa Fonssagrives

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Fonssagrives, photographed by Edgar de Evia in the 1950s
Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station , photography by Toni Frissell (1951)

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn (born May 17, 1911 in Gothenburg , Sweden , as Lisa Birgitta Bernstone , † February 4, 1992 in New York City ) was a model . She is also known as the first supermodel .

First she studied sculpture. In 1931 she enrolled in Mary Wigman's school in Berlin and, back in Sweden, founded a small dance school herself. With the choreographer Astrid Malmborg she traveled to a competition in Paris , where she stayed to become a ballet dancer. In 1936 she was discovered there by Willy Maywald as a model for fashion photography.

She appeared on the covers of many magazines in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, for example on Town & Country , Life and Vanity Fair , she was the cover model in → 200 times and was featured on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in 1961 at the age of 50 . Between 1936 and 1939 she was the highest paid model in Paris. She worked with photographers George Hoyningen-Huene , Man Ray , Erwin Blumenfeld , George Platt Lynes , Richard Avedon , Horst P. Horst , Louise Dahl-Wolfe , Norman Parkinson, Edgar de Evia and her future husband Irving Penn .

Fonssagrives self-ironically described himself as a "good clothes hanger" (German: "good clothes rack").

In 1935 she married the Parisian dancer and photographer Fernand Fonssagrives . In 1939 the couple moved to the United States . Lisa Fonssagrives divorced in 1950 and married Irving Penn that year. After her modeling career, Lisa Fonssagrives turned back to sculpture.

Lisa Fonssagrives died at the age of 80. Her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow is a costume designer, her son Tom Penn a designer .

literature

  • Michael Gross: Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women , New York: W. Morrow, 1995, ISBN 0-688-12659-6
  • Lisa Fonssagrives: three decades of classic fashion photography / ed., Designed and introduced by David Seidner. With a text by Martin Harrison. Edited by Diana Edkins. - Munich; Paris; London: Schirmer / Mosel, 1996. 149 pp. ISBN 3-88814-411-6
  • David Seidner (ed.): Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. Three decades of classic fashion photography. With a text by Martin Harrison. 152 p., 118 plates, Schirmer / Mosel, Munich, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8296-0796-4

Web links

Commons : Lisa Fonssagrives  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Alexander Liberman, Nicholas Callaway: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn: Sculpture, Prints and Drawings . Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn Trust, 1994 ( google.de [accessed July 6, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Rosemary Ranck, "The First Supermodel," The New York Times , February 9, 1997 Online article , accessed October 8, 2009
  3. ^ Anne-Marie Schiro, "Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, 80, Artist Who Gave Up Career as a Model," The New York Times , February 6, 1992 online , accessed October 8, 2009
  4. ↑ Marina Dafova: Still dance. The first supermodel was a dancer: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn . In: dance . The Theaterverlag, Berlin November 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Fonssagrives, Lisa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fonssagrives-Penn, Lisa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish model
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Gothenburg Sweden
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 1992
Place of death New York City , New York , United States