Zelda by Herself: The Art of Zelda Fitzgerald

Although best known as the beautiful and flamboyant wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald was an accomplished artist in her own right. Her creative endeavors in writing, dancing, doll crafting, and painting were highly successful yet overshadowed by her husband’s work. This exhibition includes 54 watercolors and paper dolls from the Fitzgerald estate, some illustrative of their fast-paced life and others drawn from well-known literature. Her work, which covers religious themes as well as fairytales, children’s books, and her lifelong fascination with dance, combines a wealth of influences—Expressionism, Surrealism, and Cubism, as well as American Modernists such as Georgia O’Keefe—but is strikingly original in its lyrical intensity and almost febrile use of color.

Zelda developed schizophrenia in her thirties and spent the last two decades of her life in a succession of hospitals and institutions, where painting and doll-making gave structure to her days and served as an outlet for the emotions, obsessions, and nostalgia that had come to dominate her life. Sadly, many of the extraordinary paintings she created during this time—the most prolific of her life—have been lost, whether misplaced or destroyed in fires; even so, enough survive to demonstrate her incandescent talent and show conclusively that she was much more than just her husband’s shadow. This exhibition was organized by the Robert Hull Fleming Museum and the Fitzgerald estate with International Arts & Artists.