Stettheimer, Florine, 1871–1944, American modernist painter, b. Rochester, N.Y., studied Art Students League, New York City (1892–95). She was exposed to the many forms of early modernism while her family lived for two decades in Europe. At the start of World War I they returned to New York, where she and her two sisters hosted a salon frequented by avant-garde artists and others, including as Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Stieglitz, and Carl Van Vechten. Many of Stettheimer's works were portraits of these and other artistic friends and of their social milieu. She also painted crowded and exuberant scenes of parties and other amusements, portraying figures in a witty, sophisticated, and simplified style, with bright, saturated colors. Stettheimer is also known for the set and costumes she designed for Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and for her Cathedrals series (Metropolitan Mus.): Broadway (1929), Fifth Avenue (1931), Wall Street (1939), and Art (1942). Her work is in many museums; Columbia has the largest collection.
See museum catalogs by B. Sussman et al. (1995) and M. Mühling and K. Althaus, ed. (2015); biographies by P. Tyler (1963) and B. J. Bloemink (1995).
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