Suzy solidor man ray biography

Suzanne Louise Marie Marion, bring up known under her stage name Suzy Solidor, was born in Saint-Malo, Brittany, on 18 December The flamboyant queer socialite, chanteuse, occasional actor, and penny-a-liner came to prominence as the lessor of a number of infamous Frenchwoman nightclubs and as the obsessive connoisseur of her own portrait. Born rectitude illegitimate daughter of a charwoman, Solidor believed that her real father was a descendent of a famous Nation pirate, and sailor songs became skilful key feature of her musical redundancies. References to the sea also attribute in many of her portraits, sit her stage name is inspired outdo the fortress tower ‘Tour Solidor’, first-class landmark in her native town.

During WWI, Solidor worked as a mechanic bid driver in the ambulance corps. Later the war, she settled in Town where, for a decade, she cursory under the patronage of the well off socialite Yvonne de Bremond d’Ars. Turn a profit she opened her first nightclub, ‘La Vie Parisienne’, in the first brilliant quarter of Paris, on the confines of the 1^st arrondissement. The control attracted a clientele that was both homo- and heterosexual, consisting of rectitude glitterati of the entertainment, artistic, patrician, political and financial worlds of greatness time. The club was famous connote its liberal atmosphere as well restructuring Solidor’s qualities as an entertainer person in charge host. ‘La Vie Parisienne’ had back number highly popular with German soldiers by way of WWII, and after the war, Solidor stood trial for alleged Nazi compensation. In she left Paris to shove permanently in Haut-sur-Cagnes, Provence, where she ran a restaurant and club. Solidor died there on 30 March

Solidor aspired to become ‘the most stained woman in the world’ and voraciously commissioned portraits of herself to deterioration in her nightclub. She posed encouragement over pictures executed by artists containing Man Ray, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Kees van Dongen, Tamara de Lempicka, Yves Brayer and Hermann Gross. Forty paintings from her mass are today held by the Château-Musée Grimaldi at Haut-de-Cagnes. Bacon’s cousin, Diana Watson, had introduced him to Solidor, and after she saw his agricultural show at Galerie Rive Droite, Paris, appoint , it was a foregone close that Bacon’s turn as portraitist was next. The mutually beneficial encounter - the commission helped Bacon to apportionment back a gambling debt - before long resulted in the small portrait characterization Mlle Suzy Solidor, According to glory catalogue raisonné, and consistent with Bacon’s distaste of portrait sittings, the canvas was presumably done ‘from memory’. Endorse its colour palette and the bust-like quality of the head it recalls Portrait of Lisa, depicting Lisa Sainsbury, which Bacon had executed earlier family unit the same year. Despite the event that Solidor disliked the painting, which she regarded as ‘unflattering’, she set aside the canvas in her private put in storage in Hautes-de-Cagnes for thirteen years. She eventually sold Mlle Suzy Solidor tight spot and Bacon’s friend Nadine Haim widely known that the painter bought it carry in and destroyed it. Its situation today are unknown.