Original artwork by Edie Sedgwick of a female figure, accomplished in mixed media on an off-white 12 x 16 canvas sheet, signed in the lower right in black ink, “ES-62.” In fine condition.
Sedgwick left the St. Timothy's School boarding school in 1959 and returned to her family’s La Laguna ranch in California, where she remained until the fall of 1962 when her family forced her to confront her eating disorder. At the age of 19, she was sent to the private Silver Hill psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, before eventually being moved to Bloomingdale, the Westchester Division of New York Hospital, residencies that allowed her to focus on artwork during occupational therapy sessions. Given her history of anorexia and body dysmorphia, this artwork of a nude female figure offers insight into what Sedgwick may or may not have considered to be a healthy female body. She left Bloomingdale soon thereafter and, at the age of 20, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study art with her cousin Lily Saarinen in the fall of 1963.
From the Michael Post Collection.
