Kay sage biography

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Despite such intense togetherness, friends described the marriage as "strange" and "uneasy". Her work is simple and minimal, and is so without any loss of significance or personal meaning.

Sage’s longing for independence, and her desire to rebel against her mother, her husband, and “real surrealism” (according to artists such as Andre Breton (1896-1966), who was critical of Sage’s work) manifest themselves in her work.

She learnt to speak Italian and as most of her governesses were French, she also learnt to speak that language. They are not all on the same ground and divide the space into foreground, middle ground, and background. Her usual latticework is transformed into empty stretchers and the blank canvasses become at once paintings that would never be created, but also explanation that she has nothing to say.

The animated drapery contrasts with the inanimate setting and there is a parallel to be made in the opposition between the verticality of the pole and the horizontality of the landscape. Rather than appearing soft, the textiles appear to be unnaturally rough. As historian Stephen Robeson Miller states, speaking of Sage, "the combination made for an unstable childhood".

Sage had her own studio and began to develop her signature style. (Please see: Stephen Robeson Miller, Research Material on Kay Sage, 1898-1983, Washington, DC: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1983, reels: 2886-2888.)
8. “Kay Sage,” World Wide Arts Resources, http://wwar.com/masters/s/sage-kay.html.

It was here that she met Flora Whitney, the daughter of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who was soon to be the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the two became lifelong friends. Always made in a pairing, one cannot help but suggest that the artist begins to create in this way as homage to her lost love, Tanguy. Sage's mother, Anne Ward, married Henry when she was very young, age eighteen, in order to satisfy financial and social needs.

After this failure, she decided to devote her time to the preparation of Tanguy's catalogue raisonné. In 1954, she and Tanguy had their first solo show together in a museum, the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Connecticut. While surrealist artists contemporary to Sage employed many colors and curvy, non-linear, and abstract shapes, Sage does the opposite, painting personal meanings with an architectural, draftsman-like style.

Also arguably freer than the closed space of the egg and, especially in this painting, drapery poetically recalls the flowing hair of a woman.

Oil on canvas - Princeton University Art Museum