(1885-1969)
Eda Sterchi was born in Olney, Illinois and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with Lucien Simon in Paris. Her work was met with early success, and in 1913 she began exhibiting at the American Artists Club and the International Artists Union in Paris. In the United States, she exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute from 1915 to 1920 and had a one-woman show exhibited there in 1929. Sterchi was a highly independent woman whose painting was influenced by European modernism, many of which being large, abstract fields of color.
Sterchi divided most her time between Tunisia and Chicago, and in 1910, she first visited Taos, New Mexico, and from then began to exhibit paintings of New Mexico at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1938 and 1939, and from 1940 to 1962, she lived and painted in Phoenix, Arizona during the winters. She was a member of the Institute de Carthage Chicago Art Club and Chicago Society of Artists.