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The Story of a Pioneering Art Dealer
Zoë Dusanne helped bring modern art to Seattle, while she introduced Northwestern artists to the world.
Zoë Dusanne was the colorful, highly respected African American woman whose pioneering Dusanne Gallery significantly affected the lively mid-fifties art scene in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Opening the first gallery of its kind in Seattle, Mrs. Dusanne championed contemporary art, promoted Northwest art and artists throughout the United States and in Europe, and left her mark on world-known private collections as well as permanent collections in acclaimed art museums.
Born in Kansas, Mrs. Dusanne spent her young years in Iowa. She joined her parents in Seattle while in her twenties, then spent the 1930s in New York, where she associated with the art community of Greenwich Village. In 1942 she returned to Seattle, bringing with her some fifty works of contemporary art by such European and American artists as Feininger, Stella, Klee, Kandinsky, Marc, Léger, van Doesburg, Arp, and many more—enough pieces to make an art gallery. Which is exactly what she did, and in the process she moved Seattle’s appreciation of modern art to a new level.
Mrs. Dusanne's other major focus was on the art being produced by artists of the Pacific Northwest, such as Mark Toby, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Paul Horiuchi, to name but a few. It was largely thanks to her that the world took notice of the art scene developing in Seattle.
Zoë Dusanne: An Art Dealer Who Made a Difference, Jo Ann Ridley’s biography of this remarkable woman, is the previously untold human interest story underlying what a few scholars already have recorded about a groundbreaking art dealer. It should restore to public memory Zoë Dusanne's position as the forerunner among those who made room for the avant-garde in Seattle. Warmly written for a general readership, the biography will appeal especially to those interested in the unusual juxtaposition of contemporary art and African American histories.
Jo Ann Ridley wrote extensively about the arts during a career in journalism spanning six decades. She was the author of five books, and she also wrote feature articles for The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times, and various regional periodicals. Mrs. Ridley was a native of Washington State, where she died shortly after finishing her biography of Zoë Dusanne.
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Zoë Dusanne
An Art Dealer Who Made a Difference
by Jo Ann Ridley
ISBN 978-1-56474-505-7
192 pages, paperback, $15.95
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