Frances Simpson Stevens

Frances Simpson Stevens (1894-1976) American painter, remembered as the only American to directly participate in the Futurist Movement.^[1]

Stevens graduated from Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, moving to New York City where in 1912 she attended a summer painting class taught by Robert Henri in Spain. It was there that she painted The roof tops of Madrid that would be exhibited a year later in the Armory Show.^[2] Following the closing of the show she, at the urging of Mabel Dodge, moved to Florence where she rented a studio with Mina Loy, who had asked Dodge to find her a boarder. She and Loy became fixtures in the local art scene and it was there that they became aquatinted with Marinetti and the Futurists. She was the only American to exhibit at the 1914 Esposizopne Libera Futurista Internazionale in Rome, where she showed eight works.

Leaving Europe she returned to New York where she published a series of cartoons in Rogue magazine. She also exhibited in New York, receiving a positive review in the New York Times,^[3] "In 1919, she married Prince Dmitri Golitsyn, and after two years in Siberia (during which the Prince lost all his possessions) the two returned to New York and Stevens continued her artistic activities. Soon after, however, she disappeared from public view."^[4]

Armory Show of 1913

Stevens was one of the artists who exhibited at this landmark show. The show included one of her oil paintings, Roof tops of Madrid ($200).^[5]

Very little of Stevens' art has survived, one work that has is Dynamic Velocity of Interborough Rapid Transit Power Station at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[6]

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