From the exhibition release:
The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago announces two exhibitions: Paintings by Martyl and Textiles by Marli Ehrman. Period of exhibition January 10 to 31, daily except Sunday from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Saturdays 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 M.
The coming exhibition in the galleries of the Renaissance Society will be the first Chicago showing of the work of Martyl, who, according to an article in News Week December 31, 1942, is “St. Louis’ favorite artist.” She comes by her talent naturally from her photographer father and artist mother, Aimee Schweig and although she is only twenty-five years old, has already fifteen years of lively painting experience to her credit. Her work first attracted attention when at the age of eleven, and still in grade school, she won a prize for drawing the City Art Museum, St, Louis. At thirteen she went with her mother to study color under Charles Hawthorne at Provincetown, Massachusetts. Later her mother with several other artists founded their own summer art colony in the picturesque village of St. Genevieve, sixty-eight miles south of St. Louis, where Martyl received encouragement from Joe Jones, Thomas Benton and other visiting artists.
Following this she majored History of Art at Washington University and spent four summers at Colorado Springs with Arnold Blanch, who taught her the mixed tempera technique. Meanwhile her work was receiving enthusiastic attention in St. Louis. In both the Missouri Annual and the Midwest Exhibit of the Kansas City Art Institute she won first prize of $200.00. She has had five one-man shows in St. Louis since 1936 and when she had her first New York exhibition, which was held at the American Contemporary Arts Gallery last year, she was subject of an editorial in the Post- Dispatch headed “Painter with Honor,” which said in part: “she is an exception to the old saw that painters, like prophets, are without honor in their own country. She has now won the recognition of Fifty-seventh Street but she had the acclaim of St. Louis long ago.” Martyl is the wife of Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., a physicist who helped build the atom-smashing cyclotron at Mallincrodt Institute of Radiology. He is now with the University of Chicago and the Langsdorfs are living on Kimbark Avenue. Martyl’s new Chicago work will be included in the Renaissance Society Exhibition as well as Freight Yards, loaned by the City Art Museum, St. Louis, a detail of the mural she is completing for the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C., Comrades, First Snow, a qouache lent by her mother, Aimee Schweig.
Editorial St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 19, 1942 Art News, January 1-14, 1943 Art News, December 1-14, 1943 Art Digest, December 15, 1942
From the exhibition brochure:
Martyl was born in Saint Louis in 1918 and has been painting since she was thirteen years old. Constant association with other artists was very helpful in the development of her technical skill. As a keenly sensitive artist, she is essentially a painter of her own time.
Her paintings have been shown in most of the National exhibitions throughout the country. She was awarded the First Prize in the Midwestern Exhibition at the Kansas City Art Institute and twice won the First Purchase Prize in the Missouri Artists’ Annual at the City Art Museum, Saint Louis.
The Section of Fine Arts of the United States Government commissioned her to design and execute three murals. She is represented in numerous distinguished private collections; the City Art Museum, Saint Louis; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Arizona.
Martyl has had five one-man-shows in Saint Louis since 1936 and one at the A.C.A. Gallery, New York. The Renaissance Society takes great pleasure in presenting her first Chicago exhibition.
