VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Menil Collection presents a Reading and Book Signing, featuring Annie Cohen-Solal reading from Leo & His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli, Thursday, June 10, 2010, 8:00 p.m.

One of the most influential art dealers of the twentieth century, Leo Castelli arrived in New York with his wife Ileana Sonnabend in 1941. His gallery, opened 16 years later, launched the careers of artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella, and helped establish American art internationally.

Annie Cohen-Solal is a French academic, writer, historian, and biographer. Her most famous work is a biography of Jean-Paul Sartre, “Sartre: A Life”, which has been translated into sixteen languages. The French edition of her book about the rise of American artists from the 19th to the 20th century, “Un jour ils auront des peintres” (English title: Painting American), was awarded the Prix Bernier by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

From 1989 to 1993, Cohen-Solal served as Cultural Counselor at the French Embassy in the United States. She has taught at New York University, the University of Berlin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Université de Paris XIII.