“Riveting” — Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
“Captivating” — Jim Kelly, Air Mail
“Genius” — Kirkus
“Beguiling … Fascinating” — Publishers Weekly
“A must-read” — Library Journal
“Too arty for me” — R. Crumb
The Woman With Fifty Faces: Maria Lani & The Greatest Art Heist That Never Was, by Jonathan Lackman and Zachary J. Pinson, is a nonfiction graphic novel chronicling the elusive life and tumultuous times of Maria Lani.
On April 7, 1928, Maria Lani blew into Paris claiming to be a famous German actress and proceeded to seduce the cultural elite with her undeniable charisma and strangely enticing enigmatic aura. She persuaded fifty artists….
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In her death, I found her birth. When I began my research into Maria Lani, no historian had yet made a serious study of her, and little reliable information could be found, mostly just scattered news reports and unsourced rumors in memoirs. The more I read about Maria, the less I felt I knew her,
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By 2008, three years in, my research into the life of Maria Lani had stalled. I had plumbed archives in Paris and New York. I had made (what seemed to me at least) monumental discoveries, including her real name and age, but I despaired of finding enough material to fill an entire book, as I’d
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I never wanted to be an art historian. Art-making has always vexed me. From my earliest days doodling in kindergarten, the gulf between what I saw in my mind’s eye and what appeared on the page gave me vertigo. I obsessively tried to bridge it, but never could tame my treasonous hand. “An artwork is