Alexina Duchamp

Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp (née Sattler; January 6, 1906 – December 20, 1995) was the wife of Pierre Matisse, daughter-in-law of artist Henri Matisse, and second wife of artist and chess player Marcel Duchamp. Background She was born Alexina Sattler in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1906. The youngest daughter of prominent surgeon Robert Sattler, Alexina was nicknamed "Teeny" by her mother Agnes Mitchell because of her low birth weight. Paris and marriage to Pierre Matisse Sattler at first thought of becoming an artist and went to Paris in 1921, where for a time she studied sculpture with Constantin Brâncuși at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. She first met Marcel Duchamp in 1923 at a ball given in her honor by American sculptor Mariette Benedict Mills, the mother of a close friend. In 1929 Teeny married Pierre Matisse, an art dealer and the youngest son of Fauve artist Henri Matisse. They had three children: Jacqueline, Paul, and Peter. Throughout 1938, Henri Matisse made a series of portrait sketches of Alexina. When her husband was mobilized in Paris at the outbreak of World War II, she ran his gallery for some months. In 1949 Pierre and Teeny separated due to Pierre's infidelity with Patricia Kane Matta, the former wife of surrealist painter Roberto Matta. She received many important paintings in the subsequent divorce settlement.