#art, Do You Know Suzy? Women Artists Series

I am almost positive that you do not know this artist. So I will tell you a bit about her, but I do encourage you to look further on, especially if you are interested in women artists and in abstract art. Suzy Frelinghuysen was an artist and an opera singer born in Newark, New Jersey (US) in 1911.

Suzy’s father was the president of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. of New Jersey. Her grandfather, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen was Secretary of State under US President Chester A. Arthur), and her great-great-uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen had been a senator from New Jersey.

Although Suzy studied voice, she always displayed an interest in painting. Her training in art was mainly through tutors in New Jersey and in her many and frequent trips to Europe. Then in 1935 she got married to North American artist, and advocate for American abstract art, George L.K. Morris. He was a great influence upon her career as an artist. Their home, and studios, in Lenox, Massachusetts has been converted into a museum.

Morris introduced her to the work of European artists like Picasso, Léger, Braque, and Juan Gris. This led her to the search which yielded work that leaned towards an abstract Cubist manner. She joined the American Abstract Artists (AAA/1937). Then in 1938 Suzy became the first woman to have a painting placed in the permanent collection of A.E. Gallatin’s Museum of Living Art. She also took part at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, in Paris, and exhibited also in Rome and Amsterdam. And in 1943, her artwork was included in Peggy Guggenheim’s show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.

From 1947 to 1950 Suzy sang at the New York City Opera and the New Orleans Opera. Bronchitis made her stop and in 1951 she returned to being a full-time painter.

Frelinghuysen died of a stroke at the age of 76 in Massachusetts. Her paintings hang at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Carnegie Art Institute, as well as in her home and studio museum in Lenox, Massachusetts.

CHEERS