Suzanne “Martyl” Schweig Langsdorf

Note: Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf was known as “Martyl,” a name given to her by her artist-mother, Aimee Goldstone Schweig, for her daughter to use as an artist signature. She was born and raised in St. Louis, and her natural talents combined with the tutelage of her mother, led to early recognition as a child artist. Langsdorf graduated from Mary Institute in St. Louis and enrolled in Washington University where she studied art and history. From 1940 to 1941, Langsdorf went to Colorado Springs where she studied at the Fine Arts Center with Boardman Robinson and Arnold Blanch. Langsdorf traveled widely throughout her life, often with her mother, in search of inspiration. She was a Works Progress Administration muralist, and two of her murals are in post offices, one titled “Wheat Workers” in Russell, Kansas, and the other, “La Guignolee,” in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Another mural, “The Courageous Act of Cyrus Tiffany,” completed in 1943, is in the Building of the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, D.C.

From 1945 to 1972, Langsdorf was art editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in part by her nuclear physicist husband, and in 1947, she created the Doomsday Clock image for their first magazine cover. She thought a clock, set at seven minutes to midnight, would convey “a sense of urgency.” The Doomsday Clock illustration was the only magazine cover she ever created. Both before and after that famous project, she specialized in ethereal, plein-air landscapes, both realist and abstract, which have been widely exhibited and collected by museums across the country.

Ref.: Yardley, William. “Martyl Langsdorf, Doomsday Clock Designer, Dies at 96.” New York Times. Apr. 10, 2013. www.nytimes. com. Accessed Mar. 4, 2023; “Langsdorf (Martyl), Suzanne Schweig.” McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts. www.mccaughenandburr. com. Accessed Mar. 4, 2023.