Lucienne Bloch/Old Stage Studios

Lucienne Bloch/Old Stage Studios Old Stage Studios is a family run business dedicated to the preservation and promotion of artist and photographer Lucienne Bloch.

Yeah, my grandmother, Lucienne, was pretty cool. I sure miss her laugh and wicked sense of humor. She passed away peacef...
03/13/2026

Yeah, my grandmother, Lucienne, was pretty cool. I sure miss her laugh and wicked sense of humor. She passed away peacefully in her bed 27 years ago today. Three younger generations of women/girls by her side.

Refound this little book while reorganizing the art archive room last week. What a treasure!

The quote at the beginning of the book:

Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man’s embers
And a live flame will start.
- Robert Graves


Proud to see my grandmother, Lucienne Bloch represented in the newly released New Deal Art: Culture and Crisis in the Gr...
01/20/2026

Proud to see my grandmother, Lucienne Bloch represented in the newly released New Deal Art: Culture and Crisis in the Great Depression by John P. Murphy (Thames & Hudson).

Murphy, curator of prints and drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, examines my grandmother’s 1936 woodcut Land of Plenty, noting her deliberate choice of woodcut as “the oldest print medium in the Western tradition, long associated with books, broadsides, and political messaging.” He describes the image as one of “bare survival,” where a barbed wire fence separates a barefoot family from the promised “plenty” beyond.

The book also reproduces Bloch’s mural Cycle of a Woman’s Life: Childhood (1935), painted for the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. My grandmother later wrote that she hoped the mural’s “bright colors and bold curves” would help relieve the prison’s monotony and “act as a healthy tonic.”

January 5, 1909My grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, was born on this day.I was truly fortunate to grow up living next door to...
01/05/2026

January 5, 1909

My grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, was born on this day.

I was truly fortunate to grow up living next door to her, and I was always very proud to be her namesake.

She was inquisitive, keenly aware of her surroundings, and exceptionally artistic. Her life took her from Europe to Mexico, where she lived, learned, and sketched alongside people who changed art history, including her dear friend, Frida Kahlo.

She worked over the years across a variety of mediums and mastered each one she took on, including fresco, photography, mosaics, lithography, woodblock cuts, egg tempera, and children’s books, amongst others. She believed in learning by doing, paying close attention, and letting the work speak for itself.

I miss her boisterous laugh. I miss her constant sketching. I miss her enormously.

Happy Birthday, Baba. 🤍

Lucienne Bloch and Diego Rivera at the Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan. Photograph taken by Frida Kahlo in 1932.On Dece...
12/09/2025

Lucienne Bloch and Diego Rivera at the Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan. Photograph taken by Frida Kahlo in 1932.

On December 8, 1886, Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He showed real talent from a very young age, and by ten years old he was already studying at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. Rivera would go on to become one of the great muralists of the twentieth century and a master of true fresco.

My grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, first met Diego and Frida in November 1931 when she was twenty-two. She was seated next to Rivera at a banquet held in his honor for his one man show at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Lucienne was fascinated that Rivera was painting true frescoes. She offered to grind his colors, partly because she was excited to learn and partly to show her knowledge of the ancient technique. Rivera said yes and told her to come to the Heckscher Building that Monday morning. She was thrilled.

Frida was not thrilled at all. She walked straight up to my grandmother and said, “I hate you!” because she thought Lucienne was flirting with Diego. That moment ended up becoming the start of a long and genuine friendship among all three of them. My grandmother never had any interest in Diego other than the art.

Within the next two years she would assist Rivera on the paintings for his one man show, and on several major fresco projects at the Detroit Institute of Arts, at Rockefeller Center, and at the New Workers School. During this time she also fell in love with one of Rivera’s chief plasterers, my grandfather, Stephen Pope Dimitroff, known to everyone as Dimi.

I was recently sent this old 2003 issue of B&W Magazine, which features my grandmother’s work and includes an interview ...
11/15/2025

I was recently sent this old 2003 issue of B&W Magazine, which features my grandmother’s work and includes an interview with me about her photographs, and I realize I haven’t shared it before. It’s not perfect in every detail, but it is still a thoughtful look at my grandmother’s early years with her camera and her friendship with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

What I love most is seeing a small group of her photographs gathered together like this. My grandmother always had a way of being present without interrupting the moment. She captured people exactly as they were, no matter what they were going through.

Sharing these old articles reminds me how much of her story still needs to be told and how meaningful it is for me to be able to tell it. I’ll continue posting more from the archives. ✨✨✨

September 5, 1936 Lucienne Bloch married Stephen Pope Dimitroff in Flint, Michigan. The Bulgarian ceremony was lively an...
09/05/2025

September 5, 1936
Lucienne Bloch married Stephen Pope Dimitroff in Flint, Michigan. The Bulgarian ceremony was lively and beautiful, full of dancing, music, and plenty of good food.

Although they had already been living together for three years, it was important to the groom’s family that they make things legal. 😏

They went on to celebrate 59 anniversaries together. My grandfather passed just two weeks before what would have been their 60th. Now they have been celebrating in the heavens side by side for 26 years 💕

Happy Birthday to Frida Kahlo! 🎉🌶️🍉My grandmother, Lucienne, and Frida became best friends in their early 20s, and it wa...
07/06/2025

Happy Birthday to Frida Kahlo! 🎉🌶️🍉

My grandmother, Lucienne, and Frida became best friends in their early 20s, and it was intense from the start. Their first interaction was classic Frida. She walked right up to my grandmother, who had been deep in conversation about frescoes with Diego, stared her in the face, and said, “I hate you.” My grandmother thought it was the most unusual and exciting introduction imaginable. They were inseparable after that.

Frida wasn’t easy. She was fiery, moody, funny, brutally honest, and deeply loyal. Lucienne could match her energy, and Frida knew it. They drank tequila with lemon and salt, bought marbles and silly trinkets, and made each other laugh when Frida felt everything was falling apart.

They didn’t have decades together, but the years they shared were filled with enough stories to fill a whole book. One which I’m currently working on.

Frida would cuss out the elevator boys, watch the apes at the zoo for hours, and see the same movies again and again. There was grief, art, chaos, and a kind of friendship that shaped my grandmother for the rest of her life.

Frida even became the godmother to her first child. She left behind a legacy, but also a string of real, gritty, human memories that my grandmother shared with me often.

📷 Frida with Doily on her Head, photograph by Lucienne Bloch. DM for info on signed, collectible prints.

Happy Birthday to Margaretha Elisabetha Augustina Schneider(June 29, 1881 – June 3, 1963)Born and raised in Hamburg, Ger...
06/29/2025

Happy Birthday to Margaretha Elisabetha Augustina Schneider
(June 29, 1881 – June 3, 1963)

Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, Marguerite, as she was known, was the eldest of four children born to Adolph Schneider and Alwine Hedwig Wilhelmine Stammerjohann. A classically trained pianist, she was sharp, disciplined, exacting, and not exactly known for her gentleness.

In 1904 she married composer Ernest Bloch. Together they raised three children: Ivan, Suzanne, and Lucienne, each one gifted in their own way. Marguerite moved through the world navigating emigration, upheaval, the dislocation and uncertainty of wartime Europe, and the challenges of life married to a famous philanderer in a world of music and art.

She wasn’t a warm woman.
She wasn’t soft.
She didn’t coddle.
And she didn’t believe in giving anyone compliments, for fear it would give them a big ego.

Marguerite died just weeks before what would have been her 82nd birthday.

Here’s to the woman who saw the glass half empty, but who made sure it always had a little bit for everyone.

Protest is nothing new.This photograph was taken by my grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, in Detroit around 1935 during a Unit...
06/15/2025

Protest is nothing new.

This photograph was taken by my grandmother, Lucienne Bloch, in Detroit around 1935 during a United Auto Workers demonstration. At the time, tensions were high, conditions were brutal, and people were organizing for dignity, safety, and fair pay.

My grandfather, Stephen Pope Dimitroff, was a union organizer. Together, he and my grandmother stood with workers fighting for their rights. She documented a lot of it through her lens.

The right to assemble, to speak out, to demand better is woven deep into the American story. These images remind us: the fight didn’t start today, and it’s far from over.

Who wore it better?Battle of the barnyard babes 🐑 vs 🐐 Lucienne Bloch, 1927, rocking a little lamb like a pro. Davina Ro...
05/29/2025

Who wore it better?
Battle of the barnyard babes 🐑 vs 🐐

Lucienne Bloch, 1927, rocking a little lamb like a pro.
Davina Rose, 2013, casually chillin’ with a baby goat.

Generations apart, same gentle hands.
I’m not saying it’s heredity… but the baby animal game is clearly strong in this family.

Forget Gucci, a fuzzy friend is the real statement piece! 🤣

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Detroit, MI

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