Dreier, Katherine

Dreier, Katherine (Sophie)

(1877–1952) painter, patron; born in Milford, Conn. She, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray founded the New York City based Société Anonyme (1920), and she became a famous promoter and patron of modern artists. The society was significant in that it had the first public collection of modern art in America, and it became a model for the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. As a painter, Dreier had a dynamic style, as seen in her most important work, Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1918).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.