Marguerite Stix (June 15, 1904,

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

- January 10, 1975,

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New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

) was a sculptor, jeweler, and ceramicist known for her later work with shells.

Early life

Stix was born Margret Christine Salzer, in Vienna, Austria. Fleeing the Nazis in Austria, she moved to Paris in 1938. There she began designing ''

haute couture ''Haute couture'' (; ; French for 'high sewing', 'high dressmaking') is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design that is constructed by hand from start-to-finish. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became th ...

'' ceramic buttons and other small fashion accessories, with pieces commissioned for fashion houses including

Lanvin Lanvin () is a French Luxury goods, luxury fashion house based in Paris. Founded in 1889 by Jeanne Lanvin, it is the oldest French fashion house still in operation. Since 2018, it has been a subsidiary of Shanghai-based Lanvin Group. Bruno Sialel ...

Balenciaga Balenciaga SA ( ) is a luxury fashion house founded in 1919 by the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastian, Spain. Balenciaga produces ready-to-wear, footwear, handbags, and accessories and licenses its name and branding to C ...

, and Schiaparelli. She was then held for a short time in the concentration camp at

Gurs Gurs is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France. History Gurs was the site of the Gurs internment camp. Nothing remains of the camp; after World War II, a forest was planted on the site where it stood. Geogr ...

. After being released, she emigrated to the United States in 1941, living in New York City for the rest of her life.

Later work

In the 1960s, she and husband Hugh Stix began working with seashells. On a trip to major shell-producing sites along the Pacific Ocean, they collected approximately 15,000 shell specimens, bringing them back to New York, where they shortly thereafter founded the Stix Rare Shell Gallery in their home. Stix also began a series of drawings of shells, of which then Curator of European Painting at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, Theodore Rousseau Jr., said "I don't know of another artist of our times but Matisse whose drawings can compare with these!" In 1968, the Stixes wrote ''The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design'' about the history of shell collection and the shell's impact on art history. Stix also began to make jewelry from and highlighting shells at this time, retailing at

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and with clients including

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis ( ; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A pop ...

Collections

* Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY *

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an art museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The Brooks Museum, which was founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state of Tennessee. The museum is a privately funded nonprofit institution located in ...

, Memphis, TN * Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, MA *

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington, DC *

New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

, New York, NY * Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA *

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

, Minneapolis, MN *

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more e ...

, Greensboro, NC * Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT

References

External links

* Marguerite Stix and the Shell – Notes on Disciplinarity and Contradictio

* ''The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Stix, Marguerite 1904 births 1975 deaths Austrian women sculptors Austrian women ceramists 20th-century Austrian women artists Austrian sculptors Austrian ceramists Jewish women artists Jewish sculptors Austrian emigrants to the United States