Kiki de Montparnasse

Paris has always loved the arts and artists . Given them the much deserved love and respect. So much is written and spoken about them. I wanted to celebrate the muses who inspired the artists.

The person behind the inspiration.

Kiki, Hermine David Paris 1920s

These are men and women who embodied the very fabric of the city. They couldn’t have enough of Paris and I, couldn’t have enough of them.

Presenting…… Kiki

Photo: Man ray

Kiki by Gustaw Gwozdecki (1920)

She was the talk of the town, life of the party, muse of the best artists in town, an artist herself, dancer, singer, painter, actress. Bought up in hopeless poverty, she faced all hardships with gaiety and hope that is seen only in fairy tales. With a happily ever after.

Maybe that’s why she was so rightly called the Queen of Montparnasse.  Google search will fill you in on her name as Alice Prin, born in 1901, an illegitimate child and raised by her grandmother.

Here is her fascinating story in pictures and art.

Kiki was a social fixture in all of the parties, art corners and probably many a chambres at the peak of her fame. Until the age of 14, Kiki or Alice as she was known then, worked odd jobs, one at a Patisserie in Paris – the last of her un-glamorous roles. For after that, she had a very rude fallout with her mother, who called her a whore. She spent these years washing and cleaning up in cafés in Montparnasse, sleeping on the streets and yet somehow always with the liveliness of a young princess.

It was in these cafés that she was taken under the wings and sheets of many a painters and artists, who turned her, and their life around. Here, was born Kiki.

This wonderful, and thoroughly independent woman has been sculpted, painted, photographed, and was a muse of countless art heroes of the century.

Kiki de Montparnasse – Photograpgh by Jacques Henri Lartigue

She posed for innumerable artists, including Chaim Soutine,Julian Mandel, Tsuguharu Foujita, Constant Detré, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Arno Breker, Alexander Calder, Per Krohg, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo, Mayo, and Tono Salazar, Moise Kisling

Le Violon d’Ingres – by Man Ray

But her best works are those by lover Man Ray.

Photo by Man Ray

In the 1920s, Kiki and Man Ray coupled and together rose to fame thanks to the hundreds of pictures and photographs he made of her. He went as far as even painting her face for some of his works.

Clowning around

Kiki was a friend to Earnest Hemingway and Foujita. They wrote introductions in her autobiography title Kiki’s Memoirs published in 1929, which was soon enough banned in the United States. She was only 28 when it was written! This was around the same time she was crowned the Queen of Montparnasse.

Notoriously beautiful

The most beautiful yet painful truth was her effervescently happy take on everything in life.

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.