By Dr. Carl Mack
Zola Maie Graves was born on March 24, 1884, in Newton, Kansas. Raised in Iowa, she attended Oberlin College for one year and the University of Illinois for one semester. In 1904, she married George Young, and they had a child, Theodosia. Due to marital issues, in 1912, Zola and Theodosia moved to Seattle, Washington, to reunite with her parents. Following a failed second marriage, in 1919, Zola moved to New York. It was there that she began using the last name Dusanne and started a new love affair… with art.
With the onset of the Great Depression, artists like Giorgio de Chirico, Stuart Davis, and Paul Klee, to name a few, sold their works for little to nothing. Today, their works can cost a collector between a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Zola began amassing an impressive volume of art. Relocating back to Seattle in 1942, she loaned pieces to the Seattle Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery. On November 12, 1950, she opened the Zoë Dusanne Gallery, overlooking Seattle’s Lake Union. She not only introduced modern art to the Pacific Northwest but also introduced Pacific Northwest artists to the world.
In 1953, she convinced Life magazine to feature four Northwest artists. The article brought instant notoriety to the artists, the “Northwest School,” and the Pacific Northwest region. Her home/gallery was demolished in 1958 to make way for a Seattle freeway. She reopened in 1959 and closed her gallery in 1964. On March 6, 1972, the colorful, charismatic art collector Zoë Dusanne was collected by Thee Eternal Art Collector. In 1977, the Seattle Art Museum honored her with an exhibition of contemporary art from many of the artists she promoted.
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