Lisa Fonssagrives striking a pose beside a tree, 1958. - 8x10 photo "Lisa Fonssagrives striking a pose beside a tree, 1958.Lisa Fonssagrives (May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992), born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone[4] was a Swedishfashion model widely credited as the first supermodel.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Fonssagriveswas born in Sweden (variously reported as Gothenburg[4] or Uddevalla[1]) and raised in Uddevalla.[4]Berlin and studied art and dance. After returning to Sweden, she opened a dance school.[13]She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet (after participating with choreographer AstridMalmborg in an international competition) and worked as a private dance teacher with FernandFonssagrives,[13] which then led to a modeling career.[1] She would say that modeling was "stilldancing".[14] While in Paris in 1936, photographer Willy Maywald discovered her in an elevatorphotographer Horst took some test photographs of her.[5][13] In July 1939, she appeared in theGerman illustrated weekly Der Stern. Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939,she was already a top model.[15] Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the1930s, 1940s and 1950s,[6][14] including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the originalVanity Fair. She was reported as "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in theworked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld,George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer FernandFonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn,in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the MarlboroughGallery in Manhattan.[1] Fonssagrives died, aged 80, in New York, survived by her second husband,is married to real estate developer Sheldon Solow, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.[1] TheElton John photography collection product held by Christie's on October 15, 2004 sold a 1950Irving Penn photograph of his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, for $57,360.[18] people, woman, LisaFonssagrives, Swedish, fashion model, supermodel, posing, looking, smiling, tree, attitude," Pickid: 467660 This is a high quality REPRODUCTION print.