Suze Rotolo
1943–2011 · American artist, painter, illustrator and artist's book maker
Susan Elizabeth Rotolo, known as Suze Rotolo (New York, 1943 – 2011), was an American artist best known as Bob Dylan's girlfriend between 1961 and 1964. Her image walking beside him on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) made her one of the most recognisable figures of the Greenwich Village folk scene, although her own work developed along other lines.
Raised in Sunnyside, Queens, in a family of Communist Party USA members, she became active in CORE and the anti-nuclear group SANE around 1961. She met Dylan that year, and the two lived together from early 1962. The relationship strained as his fame grew, and in 1962 Rotolo spent six months studying art at the University of Perugia. Dylan later acknowledged her influence on songs such as 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' and 'Boots of Spanish Leather'.
In New York she worked as an illustrator and painter before focusing on artist's books, objects that resembled books but incorporated found materials. She taught at Parsons The New School for Design. Her memoir, A Freewheelin' Time (2008), recounted her youth and her years in the Village, and for decades she resisted being defined as a muse.