Kay Sage

KAY SAGE (1898 – 1963)
Kay Sage was born in 1898 near Albany, New York. Her mother and father, a wealthy senator, divorced in 1911, with Sage and her elder sister Anne experiencing a peripatetic childhood with periods spent in San Francisco, New York and Florida, with lengthy trips with her mother to Europe (principally London, Paris, Lucerne and Rapallo) as well as Egypt (1907). She attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, before moving to Rome in 1920. There, she joined the ‘I Venticinque della Campagna Romana’ group in 1921, followed by the British Academy of Arts in 1922, and the ‘Scuola Libera del Nudo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti’ the following year. In 1925, she married Prince Ranieri di San Faustino in Rome. In c. 1930, Sagemet the poet Ezra Pound in Rapallo and in c. 1933-34, she began painting again. By 1934, she decided to return to art and left her husband. In 1935, she saw Tanguy’s Je vous attends (I Await You, 1934), which would prove prophetic. In 1936, she exhibited her work for the first time at the Galleria del Milione in Milan. In 1937, Sage moved to Paris where she was inspired by Giorgio de Chirico’s work and came into contact with Surrealism. In 1938, she met Tanguy and they began a relationship, marrying in 1940. After co-founding ‘The Society for the Preservation of European Culture’, she returned to New York in late 1939.In 1940, she had her first solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, the first of 14 solo exhibitions organized during her lifetime. Further to her and Tanguy’s move to Woodbury, Connecticut, in 1941, she remained there for over 20 years. Following Tanguy’s death in 1955, she continued to paint and work in collage and make objets due to her deteriorating eyesight , as well as wrote her memoirs China Eggs (1955), published poetry, and edited Yves Tanguy. A Summary of his Works (published by the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1963). Left distraught by Tanguy’s death and inability to paint, shetragically ended her life in 1963.