To Hell with the Critics: The Creative Life of Claire Falkenstein
ABOUT THIS BOOK
A riveting biography of a California modernist artist-designer that asks what it means to commit to a creative life.
In the summer of 1951, Claire Falkenstein faced the greatest decision of her life: remain in Paris and pursue her artistic ambitions or return to her husband in California? She was just shy of her 42nd birthday, did not speak French, knew almost no one in Paris, and had nowhere to live, but she did know this: “If I come home now,” she wrote her husband, “it will be the end of me as an artist.”
Drawing on extensive archival research, Marin R. Sullivan chronicles the extraordinary life and career of Falkenstein (1908–1997), one of the most innovative and iconoclastic artists of the 20th century.
- Features more than 75 reproductions of Claire Falkenstein’s work and photographs of her life.
- Explores her role in shaping San Francisco’s modernist scene.
- Chronicles her years in Europe, where she created the celebrated entrance gates to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.
- Traces Falkenstein’s rise as a prominent public sculptor in Southern California.
- Vividly written by Marin R. Sullivan, an art historian and expert in 20th-century sculpture.
Discover the powerful and captivating story of an artist who defied convention, challenged expectations, and dedicated herself to a creative life.