Sylvia Sleigh
| Sylvia Sleigh | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 May 1916 Llandudno, Gwynedd, Wales |
| Died | 24 October 2010 (aged 94) New York, NY |
| Nationality | Welsh-American |
| Known for | Painting |
Sylvia Sleigh (Llandudno, Gwynedd, Wales, 8 May 1916—24 October 2010, New York, NY) was a Welsh-born naturalised American realist painter.
After studying at the Brighton School of Art, she had her first solo exhibition in 1953 at the Kensington Art Gallery. She married Lawrence Alloway, a curator and art critic, before moving to the United States in 1961. The following year, Alloway became a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Around 1970, from feminist principles, she painted a series of works reversing stereotypical artistic themes by featuring nude men in poses that were traditionally associated with women, like the reclining Venus or odalisque. Some directly alluded to existing works, such as her gender-reversed version of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's The Turkish Bath (1973), which depicts a group of art critics, including her husband Lawrence Alloway (reclining at the lower right).Philip Golub Reclining (1971) similarly appropriates the pose of the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez. This work also presents a reversal of the male-artist/female-muse pattern typical of the Western canon and is reflective of research into the position of women throughout the history of art as model, mistress, and muse, but rarely as artist−genius. For example, throughout her career, she painted over thirty works that feature her husband as her subject. While somewhat idealized, Sleigh's figures remain highly individualized.
In her male nudes, her subject "is used as a vehicle to express erotic feelings, just as male artists have always used the female nude" As seen in her works, such as Paul Rosano reclining (1974) and Imperial Nude, (1975), she portrays her male subjecs in typical female poses in order to comment of past bias where male artist have historically depicted sexualized female nudes.
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