Edith Maryon

Edith Louisa Maryon ( born February 9, 1872 in London, † May 2, 1924 Dornach / Switzerland ) was an English sculptor. It belonged, in addition to Marie von Sivers and Ita Wegman, to the innermost circle around the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner.

Life and work

Edith Maryon grew up as the second of six children of wealthy master tailor John Maryon Simeon and his wife Louisa Church in the center of London. She attended a girls' school, later a boarding school in Geneva, Switzerland. In the 1890s she studied sculpture in London at the Central School of Design, from 1896 at the Royal College of Arts, which they in 1904 " Associate " appointed. She performed with fully three-dimensional portraits to the public and created reliefs in a classically inspired, traditionalist style.

After the first encounters with Rudolf Steiner 1912/13, she moved in summer 1914 to Dornach and worked decisively with the building of the first Goetheanum. Together with Steiner was instrumental The Representative of Humanity between Lucifer and Ahriman and colored aggregated eurythmy sculptures for the design of well-known large-scale sculpture, which she carried in wood. These works are stylistically close to expressionism. During the early establishment of the Representative of Man was requested by many sides, came towards Edith Maryon any hurry. For this reason the work was not destroyed in the fire of the first Goetheanum New Year's Eve 1922/23, but is preserved and still today in the (second) Goetheanum.

As in Switzerland, there was shortage of housing, designed Edith Maryon - together with Paul Johann Bay - 1920 to 1922 at Dornach hill three houses for the workers / inside. At that time, called " English houses", they are called today Eurythmiehäuser.

Edith Maryon was mainly in the last years of her life in constant personal contact or by correspondence with their teacher, Dr. Steiner. He trusted her to a fraternal way very much and dedicated her some of his lyrics. When working in the sculptor's studio around 1916 they saved him once before a serious, perhaps fatal fall. 1923 Edith Maryon diseased difficult. Even at the end of the year it was, without being able to act in the office, was appointed as Head of the Fine Arts Section at the Goetheanum and died a year later from the effects of tuberculosis.

The Edith Maryon Foundation was established in 1990 in memory of her commitment to social housing.