| As so often happens with the work of women painters of independent means, the work of Cissie Kean was rarely exhibited with the intention of selling. During her lifetime her work was only known by her circle of close friends and members of her family. Now, almost four decades later this exhibition brings back to life the life-long dedication of a female artist who might otherwise have been forgotten. Born in London in 1871 to a wealthy family of German coffee merchants, Elisabeth Johanna Maria Kuhn – one of six children – was certainly not destined to become a painter. Although her interest in painting was established at an early age, her family did not however think that a career as a painter would be compatible with her social background. After being crippled as a young adult in circumstances that have never become quite clear, the strong willed Cissie decided to dedicate her life to painting. She went to Paris where she studied for a number of years, completed her studies at the Académie Julian, where she was awarded a medal in 1906. During the First World War the family changed their surname from Kuhn to Kean. Cissie Kean, as she was now known, was in London and traveled around England with fellow women artists, such as Bertha Johnson and Lila Sampson, regularly attending painting groups. During the period 1916-1919 she was painting watercolors in Chipping Campden with Frances Hodgkins, who appears to have had an influence on her style. Even some of their subject matter were similar, eg. The Refugees and Ludlow. Back after her travels in Italy Cissie exhibited at the New English Art Club in late 1921 and again in 1922; she also showed at the Three Arts Club in London during inter-war years. Cissie Kean went back to Paris in the later 1920’s working under Lhôte, where she was influenced by later cubism and the purist style of Léger and Ozenfant. She spent time in Léger’s atelier where she found her true artistic identity working with oils. She started experimenting with keeping very careful balance between representation and abstraction which the cubists sought to maintain. Following closely Léger’s approach to subjects, the figures and objects in her canvases are often simplified in an attempt to imbue them with a sense of greater vigor, movement and monumentality rather than to analyze their structure. She returned to London, where she took up a flat and a studio as a basis to work and travel back and forth to Paris. Cissie Kean never married and died in London in 1961 in her ninetieth year.
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