09/23/2024
Lost to history
Her name was Adrienne Fidelin or just Ady to her friends. She was born in 1915 in Guadeloupe, a French-governed archipelago in the Caribbean. When she was 13 her mother was killed in a hurricane and her father died a few years later. She then moved to Paris to live with relatives.
In Paris she became a dancer at a cabaret that played Creole music. In 1934 at the age of 19 she met Man Ray who was 44 at the time. A year later she was modeling for him and the two became inseparable. During their time together, Man Ray would take over 400 photographs of Ady. Through Man Ray she became part of the Paris surrealist group. Artist Penrose described her as “the delightful girl from Guadeloupe who could swim, laugh, and dance like a brown angel.”
The September 15, 1937 issue of the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar had a full page head shot of her in a story by Paul Eluard titled “The Bushongo of Africa sends his hats to Paris,”. This photo became the first time a black model was featured on the pages of a major American fashion magazine. Ironically, this was the same week Picasso completed his painting “Femme Assise” for which she was the model.
Ady had met Picasso while with Man Ray on vacation in Mougins. Surrealist artist Eileen Agar who was also there describes Ady as a “charming creole, very young and attractive and full of laughter.” She continues “when Ady first met Picasso, she went up to him, flung her arms around his neck and said: ‘I hear you are quite a good painter’”. Pictured is Ady playfully sitting on the back of Picasso’s shoulders.
The war broke up the romance. In 1940 as German troops were occupying Paris, Man Ray was able to fly out of France to the United States but Ady wasn’t. During the war she continued to support herself dancing. With Man Ray gone and the occupation underway Ady became separated from her circle of surrealist friends. Hope of connecting again with Man Ray ended when he married Juliet Browner, an American dancer and model.
Ady ultimately married and moved with her new husband, André Art, to Albi, a small town in the south of France where, as recounted by her neighbor, she spent her last decades living a modest life. She died in obscurity on February 5, 2004.
