Alexina Duchamp

Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp ( Sattler; January 6, 1906 – December 20, 1995) was the wife of Pierre Matisse, the daughter-in-law of artist Henri Matisse, and the second wife of artist and chess player Marcel Duchamp.

Early life Alexina Sattler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1906. The youngest daughter of prominent surgeon Robert Sattler, she 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. She received many important paintings in the subsequent divorce settlement.

She worked for a time as an agent and broker for artists such as Brâncuși and Joan Miró.

New York and marriage to Marcel Duchamp In the autumn of 1951 she was invited by Dorothea Tanning to go on a weekend trip in Hunterdon County. It was on that trip that she once again met Duchamp, and romance developed shortly thereafter. They were both avid chess players. Teeny and Duchamp married in New York City on January 16, 1954. They lived in New York and in Paris; around 1958, the couple began spending summers in Cadaqués, Spain, on the Costa Brava. Alexander Calder presented her with individually designed jewelry. She also served as an honorary trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has the largest collection of Duchamp's work.