Video: She Had Many Faces: The Life and Work of Juanita Guccione

Two young filmmakers are hard at work exploring the adventurous life of one of America's lost women artists.

Julie Praetzel, a New Yorker, and Tim Cook, a Briton, are filming She Had Many Faces: The Life and Work of Juanita Guccione.

The prolific New York painter [1904-1999] traveled throughout the Mediterranean basin as a student, finally settling in Bou-Saada in eastern Algeria, where she lived among the famed Ouled Nail tribe.

In 2004 Sonatrach, the Algerian national energy company, acquired 174 of her Algerian oil paintings, watercolors and drawings, almost her complete Algerian oeuvre. The works are on permanent exhibition in Algiers-an unprecedented tribute by a Muslim nation to an American woman artist.

Self Portrait: Juanita Guccione

Most of the footage for this documentary has been shot. Ms. Praetzel is now seeking funding to complete the film through the "crowd fundraising" website www.kickstarter.com. Donations can be made from $5 to $1,000. Incentives for various levels of donation include items such as such items as high-resolution images of the artist's work, a color brochure with an essay by the artist's son, award-winning poet Djelloul Marbrook, and limited- edition lithographs. The deadline for all donations is September 19. If the goal of $6000 is not reached by then, the filmmaker gets nothing.

For more information and to watch the film trailer, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1132818747/she-had-many-faces-the-life-and-work-of-juanita-gu

Guccione's painting, Europa [1939], has been selected for the forthcoming In Wonderland exhibition of North American women surrealists being mounted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition will begin in Los Angeles in January 29, 2012 and move to Quebec City in May and Mexico City in September.

Guccione's life spanned every art movement of the 20th Century. She studied with the famous modernist master Hans Hofmann, exhibited actively in New York, Mumbai, Beirut and Paris, but then became reclusive. She continued to paint almost until her death, but because of her reclusiveness she must be included among our lost women artists.

She has been acclaimed by such scholars as Dr. Susan Aberth, Bard College art historian, and Dr. Gloria Orenstein, literature and gender studies professor at the University of Southern California.

More information: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Juanita-Guccione/148594991826766

For more information and to watch the film trailer, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1132818747/she-had-many-faces-the-life-and-work-of-juanita-gu