In my Icons series I now want to draw your attention to the wonderful, freespirited, strong, sexual but sometimes sad Anaïs Nin, or Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell as her full name is.
According to her diaries,Volume One, 1931 - 1934, Nin abandoned formal schooling at the age of 16 and began working as a model. Later she shared a bohemian lifestyle with Henry Miller during her time in Paris. This relationship inspired Philip Kaufman to make the very erotic movie Henry & June.
On 3 March 1923, in Havana, Cuba, she married her first husband Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985), a banker and artist, later known as "Ian Hugo" when he became a filmmaker of experimental films in the late 1940s. The couple moved to Paris the following year.
Nin appeared in the Kenneth Anger film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) as Astarte, the Maya Deren film Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), and in Bells of Atlantis (1952).
In 1947, at the age of 44, she met and began living with Rupert Pole (1919-2006), sixteen years her junior. On 17 March 1955, she married him at Quartzsite, Arizona, returning with Pole to live in California. Guiler, remained in New York City and was unaware of Nin's second marriage until after her death in 1977.
