A captivating, spirited account of the intense relationship among four artists whose strong personalities and aesthetic ideals drew them together, pulled them apart, and profoundly influenced the very shape of twentieth-century art.
New York, 1921: Alfred Stieglitz, the most influential figure in early twentieth-century photography, celebrates the success of his latest exhibition. The centerpiece is a series of nude portraits of a young Georgia O´Keeffe, his soon-to-be wife and a painter poised to make her entrance into the art scene. There Paul Strand, Stieglitz´s prot g , introduces the couple to his fianc Rebecca Salbury, marking the first moment of a bond between the couples that will last more than a decade and reverberate throughout their lives. In the years that followed, O´Keeffe and Stieglitz became the preeminent couple in American modern art, spurring each other´s creativity. Observing their relationship led Salsbury to encourage new artistic possibilities for Strand and to rethink her own potential as an artist. Carolyn Burke mines the correspondence of the foursome to reveal how each inspired, provoked, and unsettled the others while pursuing seminal modes of artistic innovation. The result is a surprising, illuminating portrait of four extraordinary figures.