Dancers: Gipsy Rhouma-Je (Gypsy Rhoumaje)

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

1925  

color aquatint with etching 

17 1/4 x 13 3/16" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

2 of 150  

pencil titled and editioned; red Friedl Pollak Collection stamp in lower left sheet corner; blue stamed "Made in Austria" on verso. 

Triton Art Gallery exhibition catalog, cat. no. 42 

ivory laid 

published 

artist 

22575 

$450.00 

Dorothy "Gypsy Rhoumaje" Shaw (American: 07/11/1908 - ?) was a well-known dancer and actress from the Art Deco era. She pursued a career in the performing arts from an early age, working as a young teen in the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles before being discovered by an agent. She soon stablished herself as a sought-after comedic actress and a dancer in both the U.S. and abroad. She was best known for her self-styled dancing, choreographing numbers that borrowed from Hungarian, Burmese, and Latin American styles.

At age 17 she was discovered by a European agent who secured a stint for her in the Picadilly Revels cabaret in London. Not long after, she secured a job as a dancer in Paris, where her star rose as a popular performer in line with Nina Payne and Frances White. From Paris her career took off, and she traveled throughout France, Italy, England, and Eastern Europe, as well as New York and other American metropolises, working as a dancer and actress on both the stage and in silent films. Unfortunately, her whereabouts after 1939 remain unknown.