Sylvia Guirey

Guirey was born in 1931. Her mother was Ava Alice Muriel Astor and her father was Raimund von Hofmannsthal.[1] Her parents would marry quietly in January 1933[2] after her mother divorced in 1932, but at the time of her birth her mother was in Austria but married to Prince Serge Obolensky, a former Tsarist officer.[1] During the Second World War, her mother was in London and she was in New York. She did not see her mother until 1946. She had been educated at home and then went onto the Brearley School.[1]

On 1 November 1950, she married at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York to Jean Louis Ganshof van der Meersch, who was a Belgian financier. In 1957, her husband obtained a divorce based on their separation and her friendship with Prince Guirey.[3] At the time of her divorce, she was working with Eugene Berman as she had become interested in stage design. She worked in with Berman on the new production for the Metropolitan Opera of Don Giovanni. She married again to Prince Azamat Kadir Sultan Guirey in 1957. They moved to London and they had three children together before they divorced in 1963.[1]

In 1958, her grandmother died and left her a substantial sum that enabled her to take an interest in contemporary art. She began to buy pop-art pieces and at the same time her home at Elm Place became popular with artists and dealers. She also took a studio on her own account and created enough paintings to start exhibiting. Her work was at the Sao Paolo Biennale in 1973, and three years later[1] she was in the Betty Parsons Gallery.[4] She continued to exhibit in the US and the UK at the Hester van Royen Gallery[1] and the Benjamin Rhodes Gallery.[4]

Guirey died in Fulham in England in 1997.[1]