Edith Schloss (German born American, 1919-2011) is best known for knowing "everyone who counted in Manhattan's legendary postwar art scene." From the moment she was first introduced to Willem de Kooning by her friend Fairfield Porter, she became an integral member of the Chelsea-New York art scene, which flourished around the New York School and included photographer, painter, and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt (whom she married in 1946) and the Jane Street Group around the artist Nell Blaine. It was an era closely charted in her 2021 posthumous memoir, The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombly; Portraits and Sketches, 1942–2011.

Born in Offenbach, Germany, Schloss studied languages and art as a young student. She came to America by way of England in the early ‘40s, studying at the Art Students League of New York with Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg and Morris Kantor. Schloss exhibited in numerous galleries in New York beginning in the mid-1940s, including in the legendary cooperatives Tanager Gallery, Workshop Gallery, and Jane Street Group. In 1962, with her marriage to Rudy growing strained, she left for Italy with the intent of staying three months—she stayed for a lifetime. In 1964, she opened her first exhibition at the Galleria Aleph in Rome, followed by countless others throughout Italy over the years.