Hazel King-Farlow

King-Farlow, born Barbara Hazel Guggenheim, was born in April 1903 in New York City to Benjamin and Fleurette Guggenheim.[2][3]  Born into the well-known Guggenheim family she grew up in New York, alongside her sisters Benita Guggenheim and Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim who would become the influential gallery proprietor.[4]

In 1921, aged 17, King-Farlow married Sigmund Marshall Kempner. Divorcing Kempner a year later, she then moved to Paris where she married Milton S. Waldman in 1923 with whom she had two sons, Terence and Benjamin. Tragically, during a later visit back to New York in 1928 both her young sons fell to their deaths from the rooftop of the Surrey apartment block.[5] There is much speculation about the details of this tragic accident, however this event was largely kept hidden from public by the influential Guggenheim family.[6]  Two years after the death of their sons Hazel and Milton divorced.

In 1931 Hazel married the Englishman Denys King-Farlow. They settled in Sussex, UK, and had two children. While the marriage to King-Farlow did not last Hazel continued to use this name as an artist. Once back in the US at the end of the 1930s Hazel married Charles (Chuck) Everett McKinley, Jr, an artist and USAAF pilot, with whom she painted alongside. McKinley died in 1942 in a plane crash. Hazel went on to marry twice more before she died in 1995.[7]

Hazel King-Farlow began painting as a teenager and was a prolific artist throughout her life. When she fled New York for Paris aged 18 she studied at the Sorbonne and became part of 1920's bohemian Paris,[8] where she was able to be taught by key modernist artists of the time.[9]

Whilst living in the south of England with Denys King-Farlow in the 1930s Hazel was influenced by a group of avante-garde artists, and had her first solo exhibition in London in April 1937.[10] Vigorously painting during this time, she sold or donated many paintings to galleries across the UK.[11]

In 1939 Hazel fled the war and returned to the US, where for a time she was part of New York City's art scene.[12] She continued to paint and ran a small gallery of her own later in the 1960s.[13] In her later life she settled in New Orleans where she both studied and taught art.

Hazel's work was only once included in a show by her sister Peggy Guggenheim, most likely due to a difficult relationship between them. In 1943 Hazel was selected to exhibit one of her paintings in Peggy's infamous show '31 Women' in her New York gallery Art of This Century.[14] The exhibition was radical at the time for being one of the first all-woman exhibitions, as well as showing only abstract or Surrealist works.[15]

Like her sister Peggy Hazel collected major contemporary artworks, however she was very generous with the artwork she bought and mostly donated these works to public institutions. For example, she donated over 15 works to Wakefield Art Gallery, UK, in the 1930s,[16] and in 1938 Hazel presented the painting Cossacks (Cosaques) by Wassily Kandinsky to the Tate galleries,[17] which would become an important work within the Tate collection.[18][19]

Ferens Art Gallery[20]

Lakeland Arts Trust[21]

The Hepworth Wakefield[22]

Leeds Museums and Galleries[23]

Manchester Art Gallery[24]

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery[25]