Mary Cecil Allen

Short Biography

Mary Cecil Allen (2 September 1893 – 7 April 1962) was an Australian artist, writer and lecturer. She lived most of her adult life in America, where she was known as Cecil Allen. Allen initially painted landscapes and portraits in her early career, but changed to modernist styles including cubism from the 1930s. In 1927 Allen lectured at New York City venues including the Metropolitan Museum, Columbia University and other institutions. She was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. Allen wrote two books of art criticism, The Mirror of the Passing World (1928) and Painters of the Modern Mind (1929), based on her lectures. In 1930 she curated the first exhibition of Australian art in New York, "First Contemporary All-Australian Art Exhibition", at the Roerich Museum. During her lectures and talks in Australia, she helped introduce the ideas of modernism to Melbourne women and artists. After living in New York, from 1949 Allen lived in Provincetown at its art colony. Her cubist style painting, "Sea, studio: Winter", was presented in that year. She died in 1962, at the colony, from "sinus arrest, cause unknown" (see sinoatrial arrest).