Who is Altina Schinasi?
Altina Schinasi was a pioneering American figure, sculptor, filmmaker, businesswoman, fashion designer, and inventor who transformed the field of eyewear and style with her well-known cat-eye glasses.
Her enthusiasm for art was unparalleled, and she crafted vivid works of art such as paintings, sculptures, and movies that embodied her beliefs and ideals.
She was a revolutionary who dared to challenge the status quo and fearlessly followed her aspirations with imagination and boldness.
Early Life & Education
Altina Schinasi was born on August 4th, 1907, in the borough of Manhattan in New York to parents who had recently immigrated.
Her father, Morris Schinasi, was a Sephardic Jew from Turkey who had achieved success and wealth in the international tobacco industry.
Laurette Schinasi, Altina’s mother, was originally from Salonica within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. Altina had two older sisters and was raised in a huge and lavish home on the Upper West Side.
Altina Schinasi was homeschooled up until the age of 12, when she left to attend Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Upon graduating high school, she and her mother and sister moved to Paris where she had the opportunity to study painting with her cousin, René Bensussan.
She cultivated a great admiration for art and was determined to become an artist. She went back to New York and joined The Art Students League, where she received instruction from Samuel Halpert at the Roerich Museum.
Career
Altina Schinasi started out her professional life as a window display artist for Fifth Avenue stores. She had the opportunity to collaborate with renowned creators such as Salvador Dalí and George Grosz.
Furthermore, she attended a painting class conducted by Grosz at the Art Students League, and she acquired knowledge from them.
On her stroll down the street, she was inspired by the creative and expressive forms around her, which encouraged her to explore different materials and methods.
She noticed that the eyewear frames for women were bland and unimaginative, so she decided to come up with something more attractive and stylish.
After witnessing the Harlequin masks donned by people in Venice during the Carnevale festival, she was inspired to create cat-eye glasses. She fashioned paper mock-ups of her design and began searching for a manufacturer to bring them to life.
She encountered multiple denials from the bigger producers who thought her plan was too extreme and dangerous. However, she didn’t surrender and spoke to a local store proprietor called Lugene situated on Madison Avenue who consented to sell her glasses.
Her first buyer was the writer Clare Boothe Luce who bought a pair of red feline eyeglasses. Quickly, her glasses wound up popular and a sign of tastefulness during the late 1930s and mid-1940s. They were flaunted by famous people such as Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor.
In the mid-1940s, Altina Schinasi parted with her eyewear business and relocated to Los Angeles alongside her first husband, Morris B. Sanders, with whom she tied the knot in 1928.
Together, they had two sons, Terry and Denis Sanders, who both went on to become film directors. In her new home in Los Angeles, Altina continued to express herself artistically through painting and sculpting, exhibiting her works in various galleries and museums.
She even branched out to filmmaking, producing documentaries that highlighted issues such as racism, poverty, war, and human rights.
One of her acclaimed works was George Grosz’s Interregnum (1960), a film based on the life and accomplishments of her former mentor George Grosz who escaped Nazi Germany in 1932.
This movie was granted the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1961. Additionally, she produced Operation Bootstrap (1968), which focused on the industrial development of Puerto Rico after World War II.
Personal Life
Altina Schinasi had a total of four marriages throughout her lifetime. Her first, to Morris B. Sanders, ended in 1951 after 23 years together. Following this, she was briefly married to Theodore Lutz in 1952. Her third was to Dennis Miranda, whom she stayed with from 1955 until 1979. Finally, at the age of 74, she wed Celestino Miranda in 1981.
Google Doodle Honors Altina Schinasi
Altina Schinasi passed away on August 19th, 1999, when she was 92, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, her home with Celestino Miranda until he passed away in 1997.
Her two sons, Terry and Denis Sanders, as well as her four grandchildren, Peter, Victoria, Jessica, and Julia Miranda-Sanders, and two great-grandchildren, remember her fondly.
Google marked the 116th birthday of Altina Schinasi with a doodle created by guest artist Sophie Diao, which showed Altina’s face surrounded by a cat-eye frame. Diao expressed that she tried to reflect Altina’s “bold and playful spirit” in the design.
