Author(s): Kathleen Pyne

Biography/Memoir

This abundantly illustrated book reveals how Alfred Stieglitz's search for a pure, essential "woman in art" led him to several women before his vision found ultimate expression in Georgia O'Keeffe, whom Stieglitz portrayed as the shining, liberated feminine figure of his movement. "Modernism and the Feminine Voice" explores a group of extraordinary women who developed their voices through an affiliation with the Stieglitz circle - Gertrude Kasebier, Pamela Colman Smith, Anne Brigman, and Katharine Nash Rhoades - and shows how these artists helped define the woman modernist through their lives and their individual photographs and paintings. Profoundly revising Stieglitz's story of the woman modernist as embodied in the person and imagery of Georgia O'Keeffe, this pioneering book demonstrates that O'Keeffe was but one voice among several who deserve recognition as the vanguard of American modernism. Kathleen Pyne adds fascinating but overlooked material to the history of modernism in New York with this book, which accompanies a major exhibition of the artists' works.