The American painter and poet Kay Sage (1898-1963) was born into an upper middle class family. After her parents' separation, her mother took her on frequent trips to Europe. Following the First World War, she settled in Rome to study drawing and painting. In 1925, she married Prince Ranieri di San Faustino. She became a princess through this marriage and a member of the Italian aristocratic elite. She lived in Rapallo near Genoa for around ten years and exhibited for the first time in 1936 in Milan's Galleria del Milione. She then divorced before moving to Paris. In 1937, she came to the attention of the surrealists and met Yves Tanguy. She returned to the USA in 1940, married Yves Tanguy and made a home with him in Woodbury, Connecticut. This was where her singular and mysterious pictorial artwork would reach real fruition. She had regular shows in the USA up until 1963, the date she took her own life. In the USA she is considered to be the leading surrealist painter of her generation.