Kiki de Montparnasse

(Châtillon-sur-Seine 1901 - 1953 Paris)

Kiki de Montparnasse, née Alice Prin, is a model and muse to many avant-garde artists in 1920s Paris. With artist friends like Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, and her partner Man Ray, she delights in shocking society with her art and a lifestyle that shatters bourgeois standards. Kiki exercises her manifold talents by acting in films, singing, and painting, where her gift is unmistakable. The majority of her works are portraits and landscapes executed in a naïve style defined by fresh colors. Her face is familiar to many of us thanks to the numerous photographs by Man Ray for which she posed.