Martyl Langsdorf

Martyl Schweig Langsdorf was born on March 16, 1917, in St. Louis, Missouri. Martyl’s art education began at an early age: her father, Martin Schweig Sr., was a portrait photographer, and her mother, Aimee Schweig, was a successful painter and one of the founders of the influential Ste. Genevieve Art Colony, which featured artists like Fred Conway, E. Oscar Thalinger, Joseph Paul Vorst, and Thomas Hart Benton. As a child, Martyl attended classes with Mary Powell at the City Art Museum. With her mother, she studied under Charles Hawthorne at the prestigious Provincetown Art Association on Cape Cod. Starting at the age of 17, Martyl participated in the summer art school at Ste. Genevieve from 1934 until the colony disbanded in 1940. Martyl graduated from the Mary Institute in St. Louis, before attending Washington University, where she graduated in 1938. In the summers of 1940 and 1941, she studied with Arnold Blanch at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. She was also taught by Boardman Robinson. In 1942, she married Dr. Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Martyl served as the art editor for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists from 1945 to 1972. In June, 1947, she designed the iconic cover of the journal’s first issue. Langsdorf’s “doomsday clock,” in vibrant orange, black, and white, was set to seven minutes before midnight, expressing the dangerous urgency of nuclear weapons. Martyl Langsdorf was a prolific and award-winning painter and lithographer who was exhibited over thirty times in her life, including the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1944), the Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, the St. Louis Society of Independent Artists, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among many other places. Langsdorf painted well into her nineties. When friends and acquaintances asked her if she was still painting, her response was, “Are you still breathing?” ( New York Times, April 18, 2013). She died in 2013 in Schaumburg, Illinois, survived by a brother, two daughters, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Martyl Schweig Langsdorf, Cyrus Tiffany in the Battle of Lake Erie , 1943. “Martyl Langsdorf, 96, Designer of the Doomsday Clock,” New York Times , April 18, 2013, B18. Scott Kerr and R. H. Dick, An American Art Colony: The Art and Artists of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri 1930-1940 (St. Louis: McCaughen & Burr Press, 2004). St. Louis Public Library, Dictionary of Saint Louis Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1993). Anita Jacobsen, Jacobsen's Biographical Index of American Artists (Carrollton: A.J. Publications, 2002). Martyl Schweig Langsdorf, Cyrus Tiffany in the Battle of Lake Erie , 1943. “Martyl Langsdorf, 96, Designer of the Doomsday Clock,” New York Times , April 18, 2013, B18. Scott Kerr and R. H. Dick, An American Art Colony: The Art and Artists of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri 1930-1940 (St. Louis: McCaughen & Burr Press, 2004). St. Louis Public Library, Dictionary of Saint Louis Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1993). Anita Jacobsen, Jacobsen's Biographical Index of American Artists (Carrollton: A.J. Publications, 2002).