1000 Museums

Born in Rochester, New York, Florine Stettheimer was a Jewish American painter, poet, and designer. The fourth of five children, Florine lived with her mother and two sisters in New York City after their father left. She studied in the Art Students League, New York, as well as across Europe while traveling with her sisters and mother – her sibling was also artistic. The group returned to New York from their travels abroad at the start of the First World War. Florine made work in private and rarely showed her work publically after a solo-show in 1916 was received rather poorly. Her work was her own, not for public appeal or approval. She was acquainted with significant names in the art world at the time such as Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Stieglitz, the former of whom she shared somewhat of a kindred-spirit as they were both children of well-off families who created art for their own enjoyment, through the dinner parties she and her sisters would host at their shared townhouse. She did not appear to have many close relationships, and no long term romantic partners, she was a woman less of friendship or warmth and more of intrigue and admiration.