Sage, Kay

Sage, Kay (b Albany, NY, 25 June 1898; d Woodbury, Conn., 25 Jan. 1963).
American Surrealist painter, mainly self-taught as an artist. The daughter of wealthy parents, she spent much of her life in Italy (she was married to an Italian prince, 1925–35), and Giorgio de Chirico was an early influence on her work. In 1937 she moved to Paris, where she met Yves Tanguy in 1939. He followed her to the USA in 1940 and they married later that year. From the time of her return to America, architectural motifs became prominent in her work—strange steel structures depicted in sharp detail against vistas of unreal space—and her pictures also included draperies from which faces and figures sometimes mistily emerged (Tomorrow is Never, 1955, Met. Mus., New York). Sage also made mixed-media constructions and wrote poetry. Tanguy's sudden death in 1955 cast a shadow over her last years and she committed suicide.