Dorothy Iannone

Dorothy Iannone
Born	Dorothy Iannone 1933 Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Known for	Painter

Dorothy Iannone is an American-born visual artist who is particularly noted for her autobiographical texts, films, and paintings that explicitly depict female sexuality and "ecstatic unity." She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Iannone was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1933. Her father died when she was just two years old and she was raised by her mother Sarah Nicoletti Iannone, later Sarah Pucci. She graduated from Boston University in 1957 with a B.A. in American Literature. She went on to study English Literature at the graduate level at Brandeis University. In 1958 she married the painter James Upham and the couple moved to New York City. The following year, Iannone taught herself to paint alongside her husband. Between 1963 and 1967 she exhibited with her husband at the Stryke Gallery, an exhibition space she ran with her husband in New York and traveled frequently to Europe and Asia. In 1961 the U.S. Customs at the Idlewild Airport in Queens, New York seized her book The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller she was traveling with and which was banned at the time. Iannone sued the U.S. Customs with assistance from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which caused her book to be returned and the ban on Miller to be lifted.

The majority of Iannone's paintings, texts, and visual narratives depict themes of erotic love. Her explicit renderings of the human body draw heavily from the artist's travels and from Japanese woodcuts, Greek vases, and visual motifs from Eastern religions, including Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Tantrism and Christian ecstatic traditions like those of the seventeenth-century Baroque. Her small wooden statues of celebrities with visible genitals, including Charlie Chaplin and Jacqueline Kennedy, especially display with the artist's interest in African tribal statues.

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