A Brush with History: Eda Kavin and the San Francisco Century

RELEASED BY ITHURIEL’S SPEAR

A BRUSH WITH HISTORY: EDA KAVIN & THE SAN FRANCISCO CENTURY

A breakthrough biography of San Francisco artist Eda Kavin by William Torphy vividly explores the life, politics, bound books and paintings of Eda Kavin, one of the great ladies of San Francisco.  A BRUSH WITH HISTORY is set against a backdrop of the city’s important role in major historical events of the 20th Century. At the age of 75 Eda took up a brush to master Chinese Ink painting, baffling only those who did not know her—for Eda had communed and collaborated with some of the century’s great artists: John Cage, Emmy Lou Packard, Henry Miller, Yehudi Menuhin and Robert Duncan. While orbiting her native San Francisco, Torphy leads us on this remarkable woman’s nine decade odyssey from the radical Jewish chicken farms of Petaluma to Stalinist Russia and back home to be woven into the activist history of the city she loved. Illustrated with extensive photographs and art reproductions, 35 pages in color.

Ithuriel’s Spear. Spring, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9835791-0-6. Paperback, 143pp. $40