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{{short description|American artist}}
{{multiple issues|
{{COI|date=May 2012}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2023}}
{{Infobox person
{{original research|date=May 2012}}
| name = Lilian Swann Saarinen
{{unreferenced|date=October 2013}}
| image = <!-- filename only, no "File:" or "Image:" prefix, and no enclosing [[brackets]] -->
| alt = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software -->
| caption =
| birth_name = <!-- only use if different from name -->
| birth_date = {{birth date|1912|04|17|mf=yes}}
| birth_place = New York City, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|05|22|1912|04|12|mf=yes}}
| death_place = [[Cohasset, Massachusetts]], U.S.
| education = [[Miss Chapin's School]]
| alma_mater = [[Art Students League of New York]]<br>[[Cranbrook Academy of Art]]
| occupation = Sculptor, artist, writer
| years_active =
| known_for =
| spouse = {{marriage|[[Eero Saarinen]]|1939|1954|end=divorced}}
| children = 2; including [[Eric Saarinen]]
| relatives = [[Edie Sedgwick]] (cousin)
}}
}}


'''Lilian Louisa Swann Saarinen''' (April 17, 1912 &ndash; May 22, 1995) was an American sculptor, artist, and writer. She was the first wife of [[Finnish-American]] architect and industrial designer [[Eero Saarinen]], with whom she sometimes collaborated.


==Early life==
'''Lilian Louisa Swann Saarinen''' (1912-1995) was a sculptor and artist, and wife of architect and industrial designer [[Eero Saarinen]]. “Lily” was born in [[New York City]] to Susan Ridley Sedgwick Swann Hammond and Dr. Arthur Wharton Swann. She studied at the [[Art Students League of New York|Art Students’ League of NYC]] with [[Alexander Archipenko]] and, later, with [[Albert Stewart]] and [[Heinz Warneke]] before moving to [[Michigan]] where she studied under [[Carl Milles]] at the [[Cranbrook Academy of Art]]. She married Saarinen, whom she met at Cranbrook, in 1939, moving to [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] after their divorce in 1951.
She was born in New York City to Dr. Arthur Wharton Swann and his wife Susan Ridley Sedgwick. Her father unexpectedly died in 1914,<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ks5LAAAAYAAJ&dq=Arthur+Wharton+Swann&pg=PA512 "Arthur Wharton Swann,"] ''Biochemical Bulletin'', vol. 3 (April–July 1914), p. 512.</ref> when Lily was aged two and her sister Lucy was four.<ref name="OralHistory"/> She attended [[Miss Chapin's School]] in Manhattan, and spent her summers studying sculpture in [[Connecticut]].<ref name="OralHistory"/> She first seriously studied art at the [[Art Students League of New York]] with [[Alexander Archipenko]], and later with [[Albert Stewart (sculptor)|Albert Stewart]], [[Heinz Warneke]], and [[Brenda Putnam]].<ref name="OralHistory"/> She moved to [[Michigan]] where she studied under [[Carl Milles]] at the [[Cranbrook Academy of Art]].<ref name="Carlock1993">{{cite book|author=Marty Carlock|title=A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston: From Newburyport to Plymouth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oofrAAAAMAAJ|year=1993|publisher=Harvard Common Press|isbn=978-1-55832-062-8|page=40}}</ref>
⚫
During her early years, Lily spent her summers in [[Connecticut]] studying sculpture, and her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in St. Anton-Amalberg in [[Austria]]. In 1936, she was on the first women’s Olympic Ski Team.


During her teenage years, she spent her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in St. Anton am Arlberg in Austria. She was an alternate on the first U.S. Women's alpine ski team at the [[1936 Winter Olympics]].<ref name=OralHistory>{{cite web|last1=Brown|first1=Robert|title=Oral history interview with Lilian Swann Saarinen, 1979-1981|url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-lilian-swann-saarinen-12593|website=Archives of American Art|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604144425/http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-lilian-swann-saarinen-12593|archivedate=June 4, 2011|date=1979–1981|url-status=live}}</ref>
In 1935, Lily illustrated a book called '''''Picture Book Zoo''''' for the [[Bronx Zoo]], and in 1946 she published the children’s book '''''Who Am I?'''''


===Marriage===
Lily and Eero had two children: Eric Saarinen, born in 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born in 1945. During her marriage to Eero, Lily participated as a team member of their design group, in the competition for the Westward Expansion Memorial, later known as the “[[Gateway Arch]]” in [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]]. Among them were the [[Crow Island School]] reliefs in [[Winnetka, Illinois|Winnetka, IL]] 1938; the reliefs at the Post Office in [[Carlisle, Kentucky|Carlisle, KY]]; a sculpture for the [[Royal Dutch Airlines]] at [[JFK Airport]] in NYC, and a relief at the Harbor National Bank on Franklin St. in [[Boston]].
She met Eero Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy, where his father, architect [[Eliel Saarinen]], was a faculty member. She married Eero on June 10, 1939, and they had two children: [[Eric Saarinen]], born 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born 1945. They divorced in 1954, and she moved to [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]].<ref>Sean Flynn, [http://www.newportri.com/newportdailynews/news/page_one/all-in-the-family/article_5e078855-0512-56ab-96a3-c6e5eb3a19c3.html "All in the Family,"] ''The Newport Daily News'', June 12, 2015.</ref>


==Career==
She also designed the "Screaming Eagle" sculpture for the [[Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch]] at the request of [[Minoru Yamasaki]]. This piece is constructed of brass and mosaic tile, measuring four feet by four and a half feet as a contemporary version of the traditional American Bald Eagle.
She contributed illustrations to magazines such as ''Child Life'', ''Interiors'', and ''Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly''. In 1935 she illustrated a children's book for the [[Bronx Zoo]], ''Picture Book Zoo''.<ref>[http://www.williamreesecompany.com/pages/books/WRCLIT73972/saarinen-illus-verse-lilian-swann-myrtle-glenn-terry/the-picture-book-zoo Picture Book Zoo], from William Reese Company.</ref> In 1946 she wrote and illustrated the children's book ''Who Am I?''<ref>[https://www.nps.gov/jeff/blogs/Who-Am-I-Childrens-Book-by-Lily-Swann-Saarinen-Artifact-of-the-Month-for-January-2013.htm Who Am I? Children's Book by Lily Swann Saarinen], from National Park Service.</ref>


Saarinen's early sculpture commissions included: 23 glazed terra cotta reliefs (most of animals) at the [[Crow Island School]] in [[Winnetka, Illinois]], 1938, Eliel Saarinen, architect;<ref>[https://www.nps.gov/jeff/learn/historyculture/images/3949299860_8c9bb6fc2b-by-chicagogeek.jpg Relief panels], Crow Island School.</ref> reliefs at the U.S. post office in [[Carlisle, Kentucky]]; and a terra cotta relief, ''Waiting for the Mail'' (1941), at the U.S. post office in [[Bloomfield, Indiana]] (Missing as of 2016<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://sites.temple.edu/endangeredmurals/murals/california/ |title=Archived copy |access-date=August 29, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160911003916/http://sites.temple.edu/endangeredmurals/murals/california/ |archive-date=September 11, 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref>).<ref>[http://www.wpamurals.com/bloomfld.htm Waiting for the Mail], from WPA Murals.</ref><ref>Park, Marlene and Gerald E. Markowitz, ''Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal'', Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1984 p. 209</ref> She frequently supplied "ceramic embellishments" for her husband's architectural projects.<ref>Clark, Belloli, Harris, Taragin et al., ''Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision 1925-1950'', Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1983, p. 215.</ref>
Lily was the winner of several awards: the A.H. Huntington First Prize, the Rome Collaborative Competition, and the I.B.M. Competition in 1943, among others.


[[File:"Bagheera".jpg|thumb|''Bagheera Fountain'' at Boston Public Garden]]
In 1945, Lily taught soldiers ceramic sculpture as part of the Red Cross Arts and Skills Unit rehabilitation program. Later she taught at the [[Pratt Institute]], [[Brooklyn]], the [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston|Museum of Fine Arts]] in Boston, and the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cousin [[Edie Sedgwick]] was one among her private students in Cambridge.


She exhibited the sculpture ''Night'' (now called ''[[Bagheera Fountain|Bagheera]]'') at the [[1939 World's Fair]]. It illustrates a scene from [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''[[The Jungle Book]]''&mdash;the [[Black panther|panther]] Bagheera hunting an owl by night.<ref>{{cite web|title=Bagheera Fountain|url=http://www.publicartboston.com/content/bagheera-fountain|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150630105712/http://www.publicartboston.com/content/bagheera-fountain|url-status=usurped|archive-date=June 30, 2015|website=Public Art Boston|publisher=Boston Art Commission|accessdate=October 26, 2015}}</ref> Placed in the [[Boston Public Garden]] in 1986,<ref>[http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1472GKF785186.2818&profile=ariall&source=~!siartinventories&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001~!297743~!3&ri=1&aspect=Keyword&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=saarinen&index=.AW&uindex=&aspect=Keyword&menu=search&ri=1 Bagheera Fountain (sculpture)], from SIRIS.</ref> it is a feature of the [[Boston Women's Heritage Trail]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Back Bay East|url=http://bwht.org/back-bay-east/|website=Boston Women's Heritage Trail}}</ref>
Lily specialized in animal portraits, and her work "Bagheera", illustrates a scene from [[Rudyard Kipling]]’s '''''[[The Jungle Book]]'''''. Placed in the [[Boston Public Garden]] in 1986, it was originally called "Night" and was the piece that she exhibited in the [[1939 World's Fair]]. In later years, Lily did a number of portraits, among them, one of her dear friend, '''Gardener Cox'''.


She was part of her husband's design team that won the 1947 national competition to design the [[Gateway Arch]] in [[St. Louis, Missouri]] at the [[Gateway Arch National Park]]. Her bas-relief panels of the Mississippi River were eliminated from the final design.<ref name="OralHistory"/>
⚫
Lily died in [[Cohasset, Massachusetts]] in 1995. She is survived by her son Eric Saarinen, her daughter, Susan Saarinen, and grandchildren Erik and Mark Wilkinson, Evan Sedgwick Saarinen, Eliot Eames Saarinen and Katrina Bergman Field.
⚫
She specialized in animal portraits. Among these were the [[Royal Dutch Airlines]] sculpture at [[John F. Kennedy Airport]] in New York City; and ''Screaming Eagle'' (1951) at the [[Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch Building|Federal Reserve Bank Building Annex]] in Detroit, Michigan. The latter piece, designed at the request of architect [[Minoru Yamasaki]], is an abstract American [[bald eagle]] constructed of welded brass rods.<ref>John Rood, ''Sculpture with a Torch'' (University of Minnesota Press, 1968), p. 100.</ref> She created the ''Fountain of Noah'' (1954) at the [[Northland Center]], a shopping mall in [[Southfield, Michigan]]; interior sculpture at the Toffenetti Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois; and a mural of Boston Harbor with glazed terra cotta reliefs of sea creatures (1960s) at the Harbor National Bank on Franklin Street in Boston, Massachusetts.<ref name="OralHistory"/> In later years, she modeled a number of portrait heads, among them that of her friend Gardner Cox (1967).<ref>[http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1472GKF785186.2818&profile=ariall&source=~!siartinventories&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001~!327611~!4&ri=1&aspect=Keyword&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=saarinen&index=.AW&uindex=&aspect=Keyword&menu=search&ri=1 Head of Gardner Cox (sculpture)], from SIRIS.</ref><ref>[https://new.liveauctioneers.com/item/26943732_lilian-swann-saarinen-american-1912-1995-gardner Head of Gardner Cox], from LiveAuctioneers.</ref>


In 1945, as part of the Red Cross Arts and Skills Unit rehabilitation program, she taught returning soldiers to model and fire ceramic sculpture. Later she taught at the [[Pratt Institute]] in [[Brooklyn]], New York City; the [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston|Museum of Fine Arts]] School in Boston; and the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her cousin, socialite and actress [[Edie Sedgwick]], was one of her private students.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Anolik|first1=Lili|title=Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick: A Brief, White-Hot, and Totally Doomed Romance|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/12/andy-warhol-and-edie-sedgwick-a-brief-white-hot-and-totally-doomed-romance/amp|magazine=Vanity Fair|publisher=vanityfair.com|accessdate=December 29, 2017|date=December 6, 2017}}</ref>
'''Footnotes:'''


She exhibited at the [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]] from 1945 to 1947.<ref>Peter Hastings Falk, ed., ''The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Volume III, 1914-1968'' (Sound View Press, 1989), p. 403.</ref> She was the winner of several awards: the A.H. Huntington First Prize, the Rome Collaborative Competition (1939), and the I.B.M. Competition (1943), among others.
Photo comes from subject’s professional file, courtesy of Susan Saarinen.


==Death==
Women created six of the fourteen sculptures in the Boston Public Garden. Patti Cassidy
⚫
On May 22, 1995, Saarinen died in [[Cohasset, Massachusetts]] at the age of 83. She is survived by son Eric Saarinen, daughter Susan Saarinen, and grandchildren Erik and Mark Wilkinson, Evan Sedgwick Saarinen, Eliot Eames Saarinen and Katrina Bergman Field.


==Notes==
Gardner’s portraits include those of Earl Warren, Robert Frost, Robert F. Kennedy, Dean Acheson and Dean Rusk. In 1978, his portrait of Henry A. Kissinger, commissioned for exhibition in the State Department, created a stir when it was rejected on the ground that it ''didn't quite capture'' Mr. Kissinger. Yankee Magazine, 1978, “Oh My God, Do I look Like That?” by Austin Stevens.
{{reflist}}


{{authority control}}
Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview with Lilian Swann Saarinen 1976-1981.


{{DEFAULTSORT:Saarinen, Lilian Swann}}
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[[Category:American sculptors]]
[[Category:1912 births]]
[[Category:1912 births]]
[[Category:1995 deaths]]
[[Category:1995 deaths]]
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[[Category:20th-century American sculptors]]
[[Category:20th-century American women sculptors]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:Alpine skiers at the 1936 Winter Olympics]]
[[Category:American female alpine skiers]]
[[Category:American magazine illustrators]]
[[Category:American women children's writers]]
[[Category:American children's writers]]
[[Category:American women illustrators]]
[[Category:Art Students League of New York alumni]]
[[Category:Artists from Cambridge, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Artists from New York City]]
[[Category:Chapin School (Manhattan) alumni]]
[[Category:Cranbrook Academy of Art alumni]]
[[Category:MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty]]
[[Category:Olympic alpine skiers for the United States]]
[[Category:Pratt Institute faculty]]
[[Category:Sedgwick family]]
[[Category:Sculptors from New York (state)]]
[[Category:Sculptors from Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Saarinen family]]

Latest revision as of 17:51, 22 September 2024

Lilian Swann Saarinen
Born(1912-04-17)April 17, 1912
New York City, U.S.
DiedMay 22, 1995(1995-05-22) (aged 83)
Cohasset, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationMiss Chapin's School
Alma materArt Students League of New York
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Occupation(s)Sculptor, artist, writer
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1939; div. 1954)​
Children2; including Eric Saarinen
RelativesEdie Sedgwick (cousin)

Lilian Louisa Swann Saarinen (April 17, 1912 – May 22, 1995) was an American sculptor, artist, and writer. She was the first wife of Finnish-American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen, with whom she sometimes collaborated.

Early life

[edit]

She was born in New York City to Dr. Arthur Wharton Swann and his wife Susan Ridley Sedgwick. Her father unexpectedly died in 1914,[1] when Lily was aged two and her sister Lucy was four.[2] She attended Miss Chapin's School in Manhattan, and spent her summers studying sculpture in Connecticut.[2] She first seriously studied art at the Art Students League of New York with Alexander Archipenko, and later with Albert Stewart, Heinz Warneke, and Brenda Putnam.[2] She moved to Michigan where she studied under Carl Milles at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.[3]

During her teenage years, she spent her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in St. Anton am Arlberg in Austria. She was an alternate on the first U.S. Women's alpine ski team at the 1936 Winter Olympics.[2]

Marriage

[edit]

She met Eero Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy, where his father, architect Eliel Saarinen, was a faculty member. She married Eero on June 10, 1939, and they had two children: Eric Saarinen, born 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born 1945. They divorced in 1954, and she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.[4]

Career

[edit]

She contributed illustrations to magazines such as Child Life, Interiors, and Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly. In 1935 she illustrated a children's book for the Bronx Zoo, Picture Book Zoo.[5] In 1946 she wrote and illustrated the children's book Who Am I?[6]

Saarinen's early sculpture commissions included: 23 glazed terra cotta reliefs (most of animals) at the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, 1938, Eliel Saarinen, architect;[7] reliefs at the U.S. post office in Carlisle, Kentucky; and a terra cotta relief, Waiting for the Mail (1941), at the U.S. post office in Bloomfield, Indiana (Missing as of 2016[8]).[9][10] She frequently supplied "ceramic embellishments" for her husband's architectural projects.[11]

Bagheera Fountain at Boston Public Garden

She exhibited the sculpture Night (now called Bagheera) at the 1939 World's Fair. It illustrates a scene from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book—the panther Bagheera hunting an owl by night.[12] Placed in the Boston Public Garden in 1986,[13] it is a feature of the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[14]

She was part of her husband's design team that won the 1947 national competition to design the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri at the Gateway Arch National Park. Her bas-relief panels of the Mississippi River were eliminated from the final design.[2]

She specialized in animal portraits. Among these were the Royal Dutch Airlines sculpture at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City; and Screaming Eagle (1951) at the Federal Reserve Bank Building Annex in Detroit, Michigan. The latter piece, designed at the request of architect Minoru Yamasaki, is an abstract American bald eagle constructed of welded brass rods.[15] She created the Fountain of Noah (1954) at the Northland Center, a shopping mall in Southfield, Michigan; interior sculpture at the Toffenetti Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois; and a mural of Boston Harbor with glazed terra cotta reliefs of sea creatures (1960s) at the Harbor National Bank on Franklin Street in Boston, Massachusetts.[2] In later years, she modeled a number of portrait heads, among them that of her friend Gardner Cox (1967).[16][17]

In 1945, as part of the Red Cross Arts and Skills Unit rehabilitation program, she taught returning soldiers to model and fire ceramic sculpture. Later she taught at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her cousin, socialite and actress Edie Sedgwick, was one of her private students.[18]

She exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1945 to 1947.[19] She was the winner of several awards: the A.H. Huntington First Prize, the Rome Collaborative Competition (1939), and the I.B.M. Competition (1943), among others.

Death

[edit]

On May 22, 1995, Saarinen died in Cohasset, Massachusetts at the age of 83. She is survived by son Eric Saarinen, daughter Susan Saarinen, and grandchildren Erik and Mark Wilkinson, Evan Sedgwick Saarinen, Eliot Eames Saarinen and Katrina Bergman Field.

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ "Arthur Wharton Swann," Biochemical Bulletin, vol. 3 (April–July 1914), p. 512.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Brown, Robert (1979–1981). "Oral history interview with Lilian Swann Saarinen, 1979-1981". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011.
  3. ^ Marty Carlock (1993). A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston: From Newburyport to Plymouth. Harvard Common Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-55832-062-8.
  4. ^ Sean Flynn, "All in the Family," The Newport Daily News, June 12, 2015.
  5. ^ Picture Book Zoo, from William Reese Company.
  6. ^ Who Am I? Children's Book by Lily Swann Saarinen, from National Park Service.
  7. ^ Relief panels, Crow Island School.
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved August 29, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ^ Waiting for the Mail, from WPA Murals.
  10. ^ Park, Marlene and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal, Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1984 p. 209
  11. ^ Clark, Belloli, Harris, Taragin et al., Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision 1925-1950, Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1983, p. 215.
  12. ^ "Bagheera Fountain". Public Art Boston. Boston Art Commission. Archived from the original on June 30, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  13. ^ Bagheera Fountain (sculpture), from SIRIS.
  14. ^ "Back Bay East". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
  15. ^ John Rood, Sculpture with a Torch (University of Minnesota Press, 1968), p. 100.
  16. ^ Head of Gardner Cox (sculpture), from SIRIS.
  17. ^ Head of Gardner Cox, from LiveAuctioneers.
  18. ^ Anolik, Lili (December 6, 2017). "Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick: A Brief, White-Hot, and Totally Doomed Romance". Vanity Fair. vanityfair.com. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  19. ^ Peter Hastings Falk, ed., The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Volume III, 1914-1968 (Sound View Press, 1989), p. 403.
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