thumb|200px|Alice Prin (Kiki), ca. 1920, by Gustaw Gwozdecki (1880-1935)
Alice Ernestine Prin (October 2, 1901 – April 29, 1953), better known as
Kiki de Montparnasse, was a
French artists'
model,
nightclub singer,
actress,
memoirist,
painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the 1920s liberated culture of
Paris. In 1989, biographers Billy Klüver and Julie Martin called her "one of the century's first truly independent women."
Early life
Alice Prin was born in
Châtillon-sur-Seine,
Côte d'Or. An illegitimate child, she was raised in abject poverty by her grandmother. At age twelve, she was sent to live with her mother in
Paris in order to find work. She first worked in shops and bakeries but by the age of fourteen, she was posing nude for
sculptors, which created discord with her mother.
Fame begins
Kiki became a fixture in the
Montparnasse social scene and a popular artists' model, posing for dozens of artists, including
Chaim Soutine,
Julian Mandel,
Tsuguharu Foujita,
Francis Picabia,
Jean Cocteau,
Arno Breker,
Alexander Calder,
Per Krohg,
Hermine David,
Pablo Gargallo,
Mayo, and
Tono Salazar.
Moise Kisling painted a portrait of Kiki titled
Nu assis, one of his best known.
Her companion for most of the 1920s was
Man Ray, who made hundreds of portraits of her. She is the subject of some of his best-known images including the notable surrealist image
Le violon d'Ingres and
Noire et blanche.She appeared in nine short and often experimental films, including
Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique without any credit.
Artwork
and autobiography
A painter in her own right, in 1927 Kiki had a sold-out exhibition of her paintings at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps in Paris. Signing her work with her chosen single name, she usually noted the year. Her drawings and paintings comprise portraits, self-portraits, social activities, fanciful animals, and dreamy landscapes composed in a light, slightly uneven, expressionist style that is a reflection of her easy-going manner and boundless optimism.
Her autobiography was published in 1929 as
Kiki's Memoirs, with
Ernest Hemingway and
Tsuguharu Foujita providing the introduction. In 1930 the book was translated by
Samuel Putnam and published in
New York City by Black Manikin Press, but it was immediately banned by the
United States government.
Kiki's Memoirs remained banned in the United States through the late 1970s, when it was still held in the section for banned books in the
New York Public Library. Her autobiography finally saw republication in 1996.
Kiki's
music hall performances in black hose and garters included crowd-pleasing risqué songs, which were uninhibited, yet inoffensive. For a few years during the 1930s, she owned a Montparnasse cabaret, which she named
Chez Kiki.
The symbol of
bohemian and creative Paris, at age of twenty-eight she was declared the
Queen of Montparnasse. Even during difficult times, she maintained her positive attitude, saying "all I need is an onion, a bit of bread, and a bottle of red [wine]; and I will always find somebody to offer me that." She left Paris to avoid the occupying German army during World War Two, which entered the city in June 1940, and she never returned as a resident.
Death and legacy
right|thumb|200px|A photograph of Kiki by Julian Mandel, c. 1920
Kiki died in 1953 in
Sanary-sur-Mer, France at the age of fifty-one, apparently of complications of alcoholism or drug dependence. A large crowd of artists and fans attended her Paris funeral and followed the procession to her interment in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse. Her tomb identifies her as "Kiki, 1901-1953, singer, actress, painter, Queen of Montparnasse."
Tsuguharu Foujita has said that, with Kiki, the glorious days of Montparnasse were buried forever.
Long after her death, Kiki remains the embodiment of the outspokenness, audacity and creativity that marked that period of life in Montparnasse. In her honor, a
daylily has been named
Kiki de Montparnasse.
Filmography
