Alice Prin — model for Soutine, Foujita and Modigliani, Man Ray's partner and the back with the violin f-holes, cabaret singer at Le Jockey, memoirist introduced by Hemingway, painter of a sold-out show, and, by acclamation in 1929, Queen of Montparnasse.
Kiki de Montparnasse was born Alice Ernestine Prin in Burgundy in 1901, illegitimate and poor, and came to Paris at twelve to work in workshops and bakeries. By seventeen she was modelling — for Chaïm Soutine, for Amedeo Modigliani, for Moïse Kisling, and for Tsuguharu Foujita, whose 1922 nude of her, Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy, was the sensation of the Salon d'Automne.[1]
In late 1921 she met Man Ray, and for six years was his partner and the face — and back — of his best-known images: Le Violon d'Ingres, her spine painted with a violin's f-holes, and Noire et Blanche, her sleeping profile beside an African mask. But the passive word muse undersells her on every count: she sang bawdy songs nightly at Le Jockey, acted in avant-garde films including Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique, sold out an exhibition of her own paintings in 1927, and published a scandalous memoir in 1929 with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway. The same year the quarter crowned her its queen.[1]
She was born on 2 October 1901 at Châtillon-sur-Seine in Burgundy, raised in her grandmother's crowded house with five other illegitimate cousins, and sent to Paris at twelve to join her mother and earn — a bindery, a bakery, an errand round. At about seventeen a sculptor asked her to pose, her mother called the work prostitution, and Alice chose the studios; Montparnasse renamed her Kiki within a couple of years.[2]
The painters found in her exactly what the academies could not supply: presence. Chaïm Soutine painted her; Amedeo Modigliani drew her; Kisling's portraits of her multiplied; and Foujita's 1922 nude of Kiki on a toile de Jouy sheet made the Japanese painter the most talked-about artist in Paris and its model the most recognizable body in the quarter.[1]
She met Man Ray at a café table in late 1921 — she was being refused service for not wearing a hat, he took her side — and moved into his life and his photographs for six stormy years. Le Violon d'Ingres of 1924, her bare back turned into a violin with two painted f-holes, became one of the most reproduced photographs ever made; Noire et Blanche, in 1926, set her closed-eyed face beside a Baule mask. In 2022 a print of the Violon sold for 12.4 million dollars, the record for any photograph at auction.[1]
The camera was only one of her stages. She sang at Le Jockey on the boulevard du Montparnasse — filthy Burgundian café songs delivered deadpan in black hose, to a room that included everyone history now files under Paris in the twenties — and appeared in the era's experimental films: Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique and Man Ray's L'Étoile de mer among them.[3]
In 1927 the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps hung an exhibition of Kiki's own paintings — direct, funny, faux-naïf scenes of sailors, fairs and Burgundy — and it sold out. In 1929 came Kiki's Memoirs, dictated candour about poverty, modelling and the quarter, with an introduction in which Ernest Hemingway declared it the best book he had read since The Enormous Room and its author a woman who had never been a lady, but had been a queen. The US authorities banned the translation, which guaranteed its fame. That same year Montparnasse made Hemingway's word official, electing her Queen of Montparnasse at a gala at the Bobino.[1]
The reign had nowhere to go but down. She ran her own cabaret, Chez Kiki, in the 1930s, kept singing as the quarter's fame drained toward Saint-Germain, and slid through the war years into cocaine and drink. She collapsed and died in Paris on 29 April 1953, aged fifty-one, and was buried in Thiais cemetery with Foujita among the mourners at a funeral the old Montparnasse turned out for. Man Ray photographed her to the end of her beauty; the quarter, people said at the graveside, was buried with her.[1]
The painting that made Kiki famous before Man Ray's photographs of her did was Tsuguharu Foujita's Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy, shown at the Salon d'Automne in 1922.[1]
Foujita painted her stretched out on a patterned cloth, in his own manner: a fine ink outline over a milk-white ground he had spent years working out, so that the skin has no shadow in it at all. The picture was the sensation of the Salon and sold for a sum that changed both their lives.
It also fixed the arrangement of the quarter. Kiki modelled for Foujita, Soutine, Kisling, Per Krohg and others across the 1920s, and a Montparnasse painter's route to a Salon success frequently ran through her.[1]
Kiki appears in several of the experimental films made in Paris in the 1920s, which is where the still photographs of her start moving.
Ballet mécanique, made in 1924 by Fernand Léger with Dudley Murphy, returns again and again to her face, her eyes and her lips in close-up. They are cut against pistons, gears, kitchen implements and a woman climbing a flight of stairs on a loop. The film has no story at all, and it is one of the founding works of abstract cinema.[1]
Man Ray put her in Emak-Bakia in 1926, in a shot where she opens her eyes to reveal a second pair painted on her closed eyelids. In L'Étoile de mer, from 1928, built on a poem by Robert Desnos, she is the woman seen through distorting glass for most of the film's fifteen minutes.[1]
Kiki published her memoirs in Paris in 1929, at twenty-eight, written in her own unschooled French and dictated in part to friends.[2]
The English edition came out the following year from the Black Manikin Press, and Ernest Hemingway wrote the introduction — something he did for almost nobody. He said the book was the closest thing to a novel about that Paris that anyone had produced, and that Kiki had never been a lady at any time.[2]
United States customs banned the English edition as obscene, and it did not circulate legally there for decades. The book is now a primary source on Montparnasse in the 1920s, and one of the very few written from the model's side of the easel.[1]
Born Alice Ernestine Prin on 2 October at Châtillon-sur-Seine, Burgundy.
Sent to Paris at twelve to work — bindery, bakery, errands.
Begins modelling in the Montparnasse studios; Soutine, Kisling and Modigliani follow.
Meets Man Ray at a café table in the autumn; six years as his partner and image begin.
Foujita's nude of her is the sensation of the Salon d'Automne.
Tsuguharu Foujita's Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy, for which she modelled, is the sensation of the Salon d'Automne.
Le Violon d'Ingres: Man Ray paints f-holes on her photographed back.
Appears in Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy's Ballet mécanique, one of the founding works of abstract cinema.
Appears in Man Ray's Emak-Bakia, opening her eyes to reveal a second pair painted on her eyelids.
Her own paintings sell out at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps.
Stars in Man Ray's L'Étoile de mer, built on a poem by Robert Desnos.
Kiki's Memoirs appears with Hemingway's introduction and is banned in the United States; Montparnasse crowns her its Queen at the Bobino.
The English edition of her memoirs appears from the Black Manikin Press with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway, and is banned as obscene in the United States.
Dies in Paris on 29 April, aged fifty-one, after years of drink and cocaine; buried at Thiais, with the old quarter at the grave.
Photograph
A woman sits with her back to the camera, bare to the hips, her head wrapped in a patterned turban and turned so that only the edge of her profile shows. Two black violin f-holes stand on her lower back. Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky, made the photograph in Paris in 1924 with Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin. The J. Paul Getty Museum holds this 1924 gelatin silver print as 86.XM.626.10.
Photograph
Kiki de Montparnasse rests her head on a table, eyes closed, beside a black wooden mask that she holds upright. Man Ray made the photograph in Paris in 1926, and Paris Vogue published it that May as Visage de nacre et masque d'ébène. The title Noire et blanche came two years later. The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns this print.
Painting
A caravan stands at the edge of a meadow with its wheel off, and five figures gather around a basket on the grass. A donkey waits at the right. One person lies stretched out across the whole foreground with a cat beside them. Kiki de Montparnasse painted it in 1928 and signed it KiKi at the lower right. It belongs to a private collection in the United Kingdom.
Painting
A woman in a pink skirt dances in front of a fairground, one arm curled above her head, the other hand at the rim of a large pale disc. Kiki de Montparnasse painted it in 1927, the year she first exhibited her own canvases at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps. It is the work of hers that has sold for the most at auction, and it belongs to a private collection in Paris.
Painting
Four figures stand together on a sandy path across a yellow-green slope. A tall white animal with a long neck waits behind them at the right, and a brown dog sits in the open ground. Kiki de Montparnasse signed the canvas Kiki at the lower right and wrote the title and the date on the back of the stretcher. Ader sold it at the Hôtel Drouot on 14 March 2018.
Painting
A woman in a red blouse stands on a Paris pavement holding a baby wrapped in blue. A second figure sits behind a wicker basket packed with flowers, in front of a bakery whose red and white awning runs across the picture. Kiki de Montparnasse dedicated the canvas to a friend at the lower right and signed it Kiki. Millon sold it in Paris on 13 June 2024.
Painting
A sailor in navy blue stands at a hotel door beside a woman in a pink checked dress. A painted street sign on the wall above them reads Passage des filles du Calvaire. Across the street a second woman waits against a yellow wall with a basket over her arm. Kiki de Montparnasse signed and dated the canvas KiKi 1931 at the lower right. Piasa catalogued it only as Untitled, and the words in brackets are the atlas's description of what is in the picture, not her title.
Painting
Two figures in French naval dress sit and stand at a dark red table with two glasses on it. One wears a navy cap with a red pompom and a square sailor collar; the other wears a striped jersey and has an anchor tattooed on the forearm. Green water fills a panel behind them and the wall beside it is papered with small sprigs. Kiki de Montparnasse signed and dated the canvas KiKi 1931 at the lower left. Piasa catalogued it only as Untitled, and the words in brackets are the atlas's description of what is in the picture, not her title.
Painting
Bolts of cloth hang in bands of red, yellow, orange and black down the front of a Paris drapery. A crowd of women in coats and cloche hats presses along them. On the road at the left a policeman stands with his back turned, one arm raised with a white baton, between a parked black car and a green van. Kiki de Montparnasse signed and dated the canvas KiKi 1932 at the lower left.
Drawing
Kiki de Montparnasse wrote the opening line of a bawdy sailors' song across the top of a small sheet. She drew a stave and a treble clef running in from the left. A woman's head in profile fills the middle, with a sailing boat on a two-line sea beside it. She signed and dated it Kiki 1929 Paris. The drawing is the only one of her works in the atlas that shows her singing and her drawing in the same gesture.
Model — Photograph
Partner of · 1921–1927
Partners for six years from late 1921. She was his model through the decade's most famous images, including Le Violon d'Ingres of 1924, the photograph of her back painted with a violin's f-holes.
Alice Ernestine Prin (1901–1953), the model, singer, painter and memoirist who was the human centre of Montparnasse in the 1920s. She posed for Soutine, Modigliani, Kisling and Foujita, was Man Ray's partner and most famous subject, sang nightly at Le Jockey, sold out a show of her own paintings, and was crowned Queen of Montparnasse in 1929.
Man Ray's 1924 photograph of Kiki's bare back with two violin f-holes painted onto the print — her body turned into the instrument, under a turban borrowed from Ingres's harem pictures. The title is also a French idiom for a hobby: Ingres famously played the violin. A print sold in 2022 for 12.4 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction.
Yes, and successfully. Her 1927 exhibition at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps in Paris — direct, humorous scenes of sailors, circuses and her native Burgundy — sold out. The paintings were long dismissed as a mascot's sideline; they have been re-exhibited and revalued in recent decades.
The introduction to Kiki's Memoirs (1929) — the only introduction he ever wrote for another author's book. In it he said the book was the best he had read since E. E. Cummings's The Enormous Room, and summed up its author as a woman who was never a lady at any time, but for a decade was about as close as the era came to a queen. The American authorities banned the English translation, which sealed its legend.
She collapsed outside her flat in Paris and died on 29 April 1953, at fifty-one, worn down by years of alcohol and cocaine that began during the Occupation. Foujita helped pay for the funeral at Thiais cemetery, and the surviving artists of the old quarter followed the coffin. The obituaries wrote that Montparnasse itself was being buried.
Tsuguharu Foujita's Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy, shown at the Salon d'Automne in 1922, before Man Ray's best-known photographs of her appeared. Foujita painted her on a patterned cloth in fine ink outline over the milk-white ground he had spent years working out. It was the sensation of the Salon and sold for a sum that changed both their lives.
Yes, in several of the experimental films made in Paris in the 1920s. Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique of 1924 opens and closes on her face. Man Ray put her in Emak-Bakia in 1926, opening her eyes to show a second pair painted on her eyelids, and in L'Étoile de mer in 1928, built on a poem by Robert Desnos.
She published her memoirs in Paris in 1929, at twenty-eight, in her own unschooled French. Ernest Hemingway wrote the introduction to the English edition the following year, something he did for almost nobody. United States customs banned it as obscene and it did not circulate legally there for decades.
Because she was a working artist and a witness, not only a model. She sang at Le Jockey, exhibited her own paintings in 1927, and appeared in the decade's experimental films. She also wrote the memoirs, one of the very few accounts of Montparnasse in the 1920s written from the model's side of the easel.
Partner of · 1921–1927
Partners for six years from late 1921. She was his model through the decade's most famous images, including Le Violon d'Ingres of 1924, the photograph of her back painted with a violin's f-holes.
Depicted in · 1924
The J. Paul Getty Museum names the sitter in both of its records of the image, and identifies her as Alice Prin on its record of Noire et Blanche of 1926. She is seen from behind, bare to the hips, her head in a wound turban and her face turned almost out of the frame; the two violin f-holes on her lower back were added to a print and the print rephotographed.
Depicted in · 1926
The Centre Pompidou's record of the glass negative names the sitter as Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Ernestine Prin) and titles the image Kiki (Alice Prin), Noire et blanche. The J. Paul Getty Museum names her as Kiki (Alice Prin) on its print of another pose from the same session, and Christie's names her in its 2017 lot essay. She lies with her head on a table, eyes closed, holding a black wooden mask upright beside her face.
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