Gypsy Rose Lee’s legacy lives on as her works remain elusive

It was throughout lockdown in 2020 that Jenna Segal, a New York theatrical producer, made it her mission to create a group of works by the all-female forged of artists featured in Peggy Guggenheim’s historic present at her Manhattan gallery, Exhibition by 31 Girls (1943). The exhibition is claimed to have been the primary devoted solely to girls within the US.

Over the previous three years, Segal has scoured public sale homes, artwork gala’s, galleries and on-line marketplaces, buying 143 works by 30 of the ladies (a collection of that are on present this week at Guggenheim’s former gallery, which Segal rents, at 30 West 57th Avenue). However one artist stays elusive: Gypsy Rose Lee—the burlesque entertainer, stripper and inspiration for the musical Gypsy, who additionally made work and collages.

“It was as if Kim Kardashian was creating artwork and was in an exhibition, and then you definitely couldn’t discover something ever once more,” Segal tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Essentially the most well-known lady of that point and her work evaporates, there’s simply nothing.” In keeping with Gypsy’s son, Erik Lee Preminger, who lives in California, most of her work was purchased by a pal of his however was destroyed in a hearth.

The work by Gypsy thought to have appeared in Guggenheim’s present—for which there is no such thing as a listing of titles, a lot much less any photographic proof—is a three-dimensional collage that options a picture of the artist wearing a Victorian bathing go well with, her head changed with that of a canine. The self-portrait, from 1942, additionally contains seashells, clip artwork and newspaper cuttings documenting Gypsy’s profession.

In keeping with WorthPoint, an artwork analysis web site, the work was bought on eBay in 2007 for $1,000, having beforehand been bought by Sotheby’s in a sale of Gypsy’s property in 1971.

Segal has not been capable of find this self-portrait—nevertheless, her mandate is to not precisely recreate Guggenheim’s exhibition (a close to inconceivable process given the shortage of documentation), however to gather works by these artists included within the present. Just lately, the Broadway producer got here near sourcing one other work, Breast in Bowl, which Gypsy painted for her fourth husband. “A vendor contacted me about two months in the past saying he’d discovered this portray. We have been in dialogue however the proprietor died,” Segal explains.

With Gypsy’s artwork nonetheless out of attain, Segal has as a substitute acquired items of ephemera referring to the burlesque dancer’s profession, together with two negatives she purchased on eBay and {a photograph} by Arnold Newman of Gypsy reclining in entrance of certainly one of her work. The producer says she was provided a crocheted G-string allegedly as soon as owned by Gypsy, however, with no proof of provenance, she declined.

“For me, Gypsy is actually like a striptease, she retains sending little crumbs. She reveals me her shoulder after which she walks away,” Segal says. “Whether or not we’ll handle to amass any of her artwork works shall be completely as much as Gypsy. She’s in cost.”