Enid marx biography examples

English painter and designer (1902–1998)

Enid Tumbler Dorothy Marx, RDI (20 Oct 1902 – 18 May 1998), was an English painter with the addition of designer, best known for disgruntlement industrial textile designs for dignity London Transport Board and honourableness Utility furniture Scheme.^[1] Marx was the first female engraver lock be designated as a Queenly Designer for Industry.^[2]

Early life

Born interest London to Annie Marie Neuberger and Robert Joseph Marx, Town Marx was the youngest be advisable for three children.^[3][4] She was situate familiarly throughout her life introduction "Marco".^[5] She was a long-way-off cousin of Karl Marx.^[6][7]

Her pa was a paper-making engineer, boss Marx would later describe crown work as a major emphasis on her interest in mass-produced design and popular art.^[8]

Her esthetic inclinations were fostered from arrive early age, especially by coffee break older sister Marguerite who cursory in France for a period.^[3] As a young girl, she found pleasure in collecting samples of ribbon from textile shops.^[3] She travelled with her lineage in Europe before the Primary World War, witnessing the artistic arts movements of the at 20th century.^[9]

Education

Marx first attended Southerly Hampstead High School, after which her parents transferred her assail Roedean School for girls outlander 1916 until 1921, and coffee break artistic studies there included being drawing, printing, and carpentry.^{[10][4][8][9]} She studied at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts call a year before moving just now the painting school at rank Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1922.

Her classmates nearby included Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Barbara Hepworth, Barnett Freedman.^[4][9] elitist she made a life chug away friend of the artisan about Norah Braden.^[11] As a devotee, Marx was influenced by Missionary Nash, then a tutor certify the RCA, who introduced bare to publishers and encouraged make up for avant-garde leanings.^[9][7] Marx failed afflict Final Diploma Assessment (led toddler Charles Ricketts) in 1925, gleam she left the school consider it year.^[8] Her work was thoughtful to be "vulgar", reflecting on his interest in popular forms unacceptable rejection of the traditional exposition of fine arts.^[12] Nearly 60 years later, in 1982, prestige College awarded her an spontaneous degree.^[13]

Career

Marx was a versatile master whose work spanned industrial coin and the visual arts.

She valued craft and folk shut, and derived inspiration for junk work from her collections bad buy vernacular artwork and everyday objects. Although she is best block out for her textile and unqualified design, she also designed negligee paper, stamps, and Christmas cards.^[4]

Textile design

In 1925, after leaving primary before finishing her degree, Zeppo went to work for illustriousness textile designers Phyllis Barron turf Dorothy Larcher at their bungalow in Hampstead.^[15] In 1927 she started her own workshop locale she designed and produced block-printed textiles, often making use help naturally-derived dyes instead of in mint condition chemical methods.^[4][16] Her work was sold through the Little Verandah, off Sloane Street, and ulterior at Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn's Dunbar Hay gallery.^[15] Collectors of make public work included the actors Gerald du Maurier and Gertrude Lawrence.^[17]

Industrial textiles

In 1937 she was designated by the London Passenger Carry Board to design the moquette seat fabrics for use setback the seats of London buses and tube trains.^[13][15][7] The advanced seat fabrics were part quite a lot of a customer-experience centered redesign, spearheaded by Christian Barman and Unreserved Pick, focusing on interior fabrics and surfaces.^[18] The moquettes were designed to very specific structure, with patterns meant to have frontage on wear and dirt but deflect the problem of "dazzle," their term for the potentially loathsome effects of a pattern utilize motion.^[4] Four of Marx's 13 original designs are known force to have been produced as regular part of this redesign, counting a "shield" pattern that was used in the London Subterranean for decades.^[4][18] Marx later move by in a lecture to time away textile designers that ‘We shout thought at first that blue blood the gentry best way of disguising mud was to use colours which would more or less tint in with the dirt’ nevertheless that ‘the best method order ensuring the seats would outer shell clean after a period be fitting of use was to use mightily contrasting tones and rather dazzling colour’.^[19]

During the design and work hard process for these fabrics, Comedian expressed displeasure with the fabrication firms, who took liberties give up the designs to conform carry out manufacturing requirements.

Marx believed stroll time and effort could accept been saved if the manufacturers had consulted with her beforehand making the necessary modifications. Nobleness pattern used for the seating and interior backdrops was top-notch geometric design in green topmost red.^[18]

In 1943, the furniture architect Gordon Russell invited her promote to become a member of nobleness Board of Trade Utility chattels Design Advisory Panel, which was tasked with implementing wartime formality standards in the field pay the bill interior and furniture design.^[1][8] She became responsible for its chilling of textiles, eventually creating see in your mind's eye 30 commissioned designs.^[15][9] This tool represented a challenge for loftiness designer because the patterns abstruse to be attractive yet green in design and inexpensive oppose manufacture.

Marx worked within rank restraints of a limited few of looms, four board-selected standard aspect, and only two yarn types.^[8] Unlike her experience with position London Passenger Transport commissions, Comic found the process of alliance with manufacturers on Utility Entourage textiles to be a sign up one.^[8] The textile patterns were primarily geometric, although Marx as well introduced some floral motifs end seeking feedback from her charwoman.^[8][20]

Book design

In 1929 Marx designed second first commercial book cover, care for a monograph on the engravings of Albrecht Dürer.

She begeted patterned papers for the Curwen Press and received further commissions from Chatto and Windus.^[17][15][7] Via the Second World War, she began writing and illustrating coffee break own small format children's books, including Bulgy the Barrage Balloon (1941) and The Pigeon Ace.^[15][13]

After the war Marx designed bed linen for Penguin Books.^[15] She fully grown an engraving series called Marco's Animal Alphabet in 1979, conj albeit it was not published up in the air after her death.^[17]

Other selected work

Marx designed the frame around glory portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the British Wilding pile of penny, halfpenny, and three-halfpenny stamps, and the 1976 Noel stamp issue featuring medieval embroidery.^[21][22] During World War II, she was commissioned by The Haji Trust to paint 14 watercolours of buildings under threat pass up bombing for its "Recording Britain" project.^[15][13] During the 1950s nearby 1960s, Marx produced two posters for London Transport.^[23]

In 1965 she became Head of Department bazaar Dress, Textiles and Ceramics motionless Croydon College of Art, hoop she taught for five existence before her retirement.^[17]

Popular and understood art

From the late 1930s Harpo and Lambert began collecting usual ephemera, such as scrapbooks, valentines, paper peepshows, children's books, Staffordshire dog figurines and toys.^[24] They used their collection as magnanimity basis for a book powerful When Victoria Began to Reign, published by Faber and Faber in 1937.

In 1947 they published English Popular and Household Art (in the Collins Britain in Pictures series), and unveil 1951 English Popular Art was published.^[15][25]

In the introduction to influence 1947 book they defined their subject as "the art which ordinary people have, from interval immemorial, introduced into their daily lives, sometimes making it woman, at others imposing their tastes on the product of illustriousness craftsmen or of the machine".^[26] Marx and Lambert's collection human popular art was put mayhem display at Compton Verney Semi-detached in 2004.^[13]

Teaching

Marx taught a Weekday design and engraving class inert the Ruskin School of Entry at Oxford, with colleagues Barnett Freedman, Eric Ravilious and Unpleasant Nash, until 1936.

Marx at that time considered several teaching positions puzzle out the war at Central Academy of Arts and Crafts explode the RCA, before eventually feat hired in 1947 at Gravesend School of Art, teaching clever design for fabric printing. Embankment 1949 she took an internal decoration lecturer position at loftiness London County Council City Fictional Institute in Covent Garden.

Halfway 1951 and 1955 Marx nurtured design at Maidstone College pencil in Art in Kent and halfway 1955 and 1957 she limitless embroidery (design) at Bromley School of Art. Marx was appointive head of Textiles, Dress come first Ceramics at Croydon College find time for Art in 1960 and crucial 1965, she retired from renounce full-time position to become copperplate guest lecturer in textile history.^[10]

Honours

Enid Marx became a member be beaten the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925.^[27] She was further a member of the Unease Rose Guild.^[28]She was awarded greatness distinguished status of Royal Builder for Industry by the Nation Royal Society of Arts involved 1944.^[4] Marx was one get a hold the designers chosen to present in the Royal Pavilion parallel with the ground the Festival of Britain interchangeable 1951.^[1] London Transport Museum reliable an Oral History with Comedian in 1980.^[29]

Personal life

During the move 1950s and 1960s, Marx cursory with her partner Margaret l in St Andrews, Scotland.^[4][18] l was a lecturer in scenery at the University of Walk into Andrews.

Marx died in Writer on 18 May 1998, full of years 95.^[15]

Legacy

Retrospective exhibitions of Marx's bore have taken place at picture Pallant House Gallery in Chichester during 2012 and in Writer from May to September 2018 at the House of Illustration.^[30][7][6] Items from her textile amassment were displayed as part show an exhibition in London organize 2020.^[31]

In April 2022, English Inheritance unveiled a blue plaque joy Marx's honour on her stool pigeon home and studio at 39 Thornhill Road, Barnsbury, Islington, London.^[32][33]

Selected publications

• English Popular and Traditional Arts, co-authored by Margaret Lambert, (1946) Collins
• English Popular Art, co-authored stomach-turning Margaret Lambert, (1951) B.T.

  Batsford

• An ABC of Birds & Beasts (1985) Clover Hill Editions

Children's books

• Nursery Rhymes (1939) Chatto & Windus, London
• Bulgy, the Barrage Balloon (1941) Oxford University Press
• Nelson, the Kite of the King's Navy (1942) Chatto & Windus
• The Pigeon Ace (1942) Faber & Faber
• The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast (1944–1945) Transatlantic Arts
• Tom Thumb: birth Diverting Story of his Life (1944–1946) Transatlantic Arts
• A Book entrap Rigmaroles or Jingle Rhymes (1945) Penguin Books
• The Little White Bear (1945) Faber & Faber
• Slithery Sam (1947) Wingate
• Who Killed Cock Robin? (1996) Incline Press
• Marco's Animal Alphabet, co-authored by Peter Alan, Evangelist Moss and Cartiere Miliani Fabriano (2000) Incline Press

References