Zulma Steele

Zulma Steele
Born
Zulma Ripley Steele

July 7, 1881[1]
Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
Died1979 (aged 97–98)
Westchester, New York, United States
Education
Known forPainting, pottery, printmaking, furniture design, book design
MovementArts and Crafts, Modernism
SpouseNielson Parker (m. 1926–1928; his death)
RelativesFrederic Dorr Steele (brother),
Julia C. R. Dorr (maternal grandmother)

Zulma Steele (1881–1979) was an American visual artist, and is one of the pioneering women of the Arts and Crafts movement and Modernism in New York. Arts journalist for the New York Times, Grace Glueck noted that Steele was a "progressive-minded artist and artisan whose work was considered avant-garde."[2] She married a farmer, Nielson Parker, in 1926. After he died in 1928, Steele traveled extensively in Europe, Haiti, and the Bahamas. She returned to upstate New York and died in New Jersey, aged 98.

A retrospective exhibition, Zulma Steele: Artist/Craftswoman, was held in 2020 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. The catalogue and accompanying essays constitute the most comprehensive scholarship on Steele's work to date.

  1. ^ Howard, Frances R., ed. (1923). American Art Annual, Volume XX. Bromhead, Curtis & Co. p. 698.
  2. ^ Glueck, Grace (25 March 2005). "Zulma Steele and Arthur Wesley Dow". New York Times. No. 25 March 2005. Retrieved 5 March 2018.