Edith Schloss was a painter, assemblage artist, writer, and critic whose life and work were closely connected to the artistic circles of postwar New York and Rome. Born in Offenbach, Germany, Schloss arrived in New York in 1941 and studied at the Art Students League with Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg, and Morris Kantor from 1942 to 1946. Through friendships with Fairfield Porter, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Nell Blaine, and others, she became part of the New York School circle. In 1946, she married photographer, painter, and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. Schloss began exhibiting in New York in the mid-1940s and, in 1961, was included in the landmark exhibition The Art of Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She later chronicled this period in her posthumously published memoir, The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombly; Portraits and Sketches, 1942-2011 (2021).
In 1962, Schloss left New York for Italy, intending to stay for only three months; Rome became her home for the rest of her life. The Mediterranean landscape, classical mythology, and Etruscan and Greek art became enduring sources of inspiration for her own work. She befriended Giorgio Morandi and Cy Twombly, while composer Alvin Curran became an important personal and creative partner. Schloss had her first solo exhibition in Rome at Galleria Aleph in 1964 and continued to exhibit widely in Italy, Europe, and New York. By the late 1970s, she began incorporating the diving figure inspired by the ancient Tomb of the Diver at Paestum into her paintings. Swimmers, lovers, warriors, heroes, and gods soon became defining motifs in her work.
Alongside her visual practice, Schloss was also a writer and critic. After working at ARTnews during the 1950s, she served as Art Editor of the International Herald Tribune in Italy from 1968 to 1986 and later contributed regularly to Wanted in Rome. Her work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach; the Keats-Shelley House, Rome; and Centro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea della Spezia (CAMeC), among others. Schloss's work is held in public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Keats-Shelley House, Rome; Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany; and the Stadtmuseum Offenbach, Germany.