Edith Huset Talle Collection

Frans Wildenhain (1905-1980)
Moi Meme
Pencil, n.d.
LFAC# 500

The Edith Huset Talle Collection is comprised of twenty-two small drawings and watercolors by Frans Wildenhain. Commonly referred to as the "Travel Sketches," the works encompass a period of approximately ten years, beginning in Germany around 1924 when Wildenhain was a student at the Bauhaus, and continuing through his wandering years as a knapsack traveler in Europe. The works in the collection depict scenes and figures from his travels. Also included is a self-portrait drawing, the only one known to Frans’ third wife and widow, Lili.

Wildenhain’s career spanned 60 years and two continents. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1905, Frans first apprenticed as both a draftsman and lithographer, then attended the Bauhaus in Weimar. There he studied under Paul Klee, Moholy-Nagy, Gerhard Marcks and Max Krehan. After the Bauhaus closed, he attended the State School of Applied Art at Halle-Saale. In 1933 he fled to Holland with his wife, Marguerite, where they opened a workshop in Putten. Marguerite soon moved to America, but Frans remained in Holland, moving his workshop to Amsterdam and teaching at the School for Applied Arts. He came to the United States in 1947 and rejoined Marguerite at her Pond Farm Workshop in Guerneville, California, but they soon divorced. Frans later remarried and moved once more, this time to New York, where for over 20 years he served as professor of ceramics and sculpture at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School for American Craftsmen. He died in 1980.

The collection was given to Luther College in 1981 by Marjorie Talle Merriman, Helen Talle Girardi, and Mary Jane Talle Reyneke, in memory of their mother, Edith Huset Talle. Works were selected from sketchbooks that Lili Wildenhain showed to Marjorie at the Wildenhain home in Rochester, New York, after Frans had died. Marjorie grew up in Decorah and attended Luther College for a year before transferring to the College of William & Mary. She later received a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and for several years has worked as a professional painter and printmaker in Towson, Maryland. Her husband, Jack, is a retired lawyer who graduated from Luther College in 1947 and later served on the Board of Regents.

Ref: Fine Arts Collection files

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Updated 11/16/2004