Caresse Crosby - Political and Artistic Activity

Political and Artistic Activity

Although her husband Bert was often drunk and infrequently home, Caresse did not lack for company. Caresse extended an invitation to Salvador Dalí and his wife, who were long-term guests, during which he wrote much of his autobiography. In 1934, Dalí and his wife Gala attended a masquerade party in New York, hosted for them by Crosby. Other visitors included Buckminster Fuller, Anaïs Nin, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Max Ernst, Stuart Kaiser and other friends from her time in Paris. She had a brief affair with Fuller during this time. By 1941, having divorced Bert, Caresse moved to live in Washington D.C. full-time where she owned a home at 2008 Q Street NW from 1937 to 1950, and she opened the Caresse Crosby Modern Art Gallery, what was then the city's only modern art gallery, at 1606 Twentieth Street, near Dupont Circle.

In December, 1943, she wrote Henry Miller to ask if he had heard about her gallery and asked if he would be interested in exhibiting some of his paintings there. In 1944, she spent some time with at his home in Big Sur, and later opened his first one-man art show at her gallery.