Obituary
Celebrated sculptor and matriarch Marian Sautter Anderson -- “Haas” to her friends and “Ami” to her family -- departed at dawn on Christmas Eve, one month before her 105th birthday. She was surrounded by four generations of her family at her artist studio in South Haven, Michigan.
Marian was born in Highland, Illinois- a town she called “the garden spot of America,” on January 27th, 1921, to her parents Matilda Pauly and Albert Sautter. Her memories of childhood endured through her final days. Marian’s childhood in Highland, a Swiss community of 3,000 people, was “outstanding,” as she recalled, with great civic pride, including fully paved streets, landscaping like in Switzerland, and everything within walking distance.
She frequently recalled stories of playful mischief with her gang of friends, including Gene, Dodo, and Juelle. She grew up alongside her two older brothers, Albert (“Al”) Sautter and Milton Sautter, in a household at the top of Mill Hill that prized education, civic life, and independence. At the hilltop, there was sledding and roller-skating, fruit orchards, farmlands with haystacks, flower gardens, and a retired racehorse to ride. Haas drove a car at seven years old, played in the underground passageways of the Schott brewery during Prohibition, and impersonated the grown-ups by smoking corn silk straight from the field.
One of her favorite places was the underground cave housing six-foot wooden vats that had stored beer before Prohibition. The caves ran from the brewery halfway up the hill to the brewmaster Mr. Schott’s second basement, and Marian recalled that “playing there was like being in a labyrinth.” At the age of 12, Marian began taking art lessons on Saturdays and summer school art classes at Washington University in St. Louis, traveling there by streetcar. Later, her brother Al, a World War II pilot, would take her “up in the clouds” to fly in early aircraft—what Marian described as “flying through white clouds like fjords.”
The long life that followed was full of joy, art, and activism. She attended Washington University’s Lindenwood College for Women and received her BFA from the University of Illinois. There she studied art with professor and mentor Cecil Donovan, who had a meaningful influence on her work. During the war, she worked at the first all-female advertising agency in Chicago. She later joined the Fine Arts Faculty at the University of Illinois in 1947. She worked for several firms in the 1940s-1950s, a pivotal era for American modernism, known as the Chicago Bauhaus, an aesthetic and movement that not only influenced her design but also her sculptural work to follow.
Haas met her adored husband, John B. Anderson III, known as “Andy,” on a blind date set up by her cousin in 1947. She frequently recalled the story of their first date when she asked Andy to make himself at home in her living room while she got ready in her bedroom. Andy, smitten by Haas, decided to also use this as a quick opportunity to spruce up. She eventually returned to him, stark in his briefs, ironing his pants as he waited. Haas had a great sense of humor, and the couple was married on June 12th, 1948, in Joliet, Illinois.
They began their married life in a series of small apartments, including one at the top of Northwestern’s Abbot Hall while Andy was studying at law school, and another off an alley at 238 East Erie-- a period of life that Andy once said “we look back on those days with great pleasure as a time of being alone together in the knowledge that we were just right for each other.” They raised their four children, Julie, John, Wendy, and Paula, in New Lenox, Illinois. These children were a very special group and “were the best of friends and loved and supported each other." At their home in the woods, John and Marian created a magical life for their children. They put up a barn for horses, dug out a pond for ice skating, and built a treehouse where their children’s imaginations ran wild. They eventually did the same for their grandchildren, who performed a circus for neighbors during the summertime on a playground designed by Marian.
After a period running her own design firm - all while raising a family - Marian began devoting her time to sculpture. Eventually, Marian and Andy moved full-time to their lakeside house in South Haven, Michigan-- a place they and the family lovingly came to call “Deerlick” after a nearby creek. At Deerlick, she continued working out of her modernist studio, a building featured in The Chicago Tribune’s “Homes” section in 2007. At age seventy-two, she was included as a downhill skier in the second edition of Growing Old is Not for Sissies and continued to ski for another ten years after that. In the winters, she enjoyed traveling to Santa Fe to live and work amongst her beloved artist community. In the summers, she liked to kick around with her eleven grandchildren.
On the occasion of her 103rd Birthday, the President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, wrote to Marian to say, “Dear Marian… Your generation helped make America the greatest country in the world, and I am grateful for the contributions you have made to the story of our Nation.”
In a 2015 video for The New York Times, Marian summed up her secret to longevity in one word — curiosity. This spirit of curiosity defined her artistic practice over a long career that explored various mediums from drawing to modernist sculpture and found-object art. Marian was, as she put it, “never satisfied” with a work despite the deep fulfillment it gave her audiences. Reflecting on aging, she once wrote, “Each day to me is a new adventure, unrelated to what has gone before or what will follow. I am optimistic about my capabilities and intolerant of the limitations my bones would impose.”
In addition to her curious mind, many of those close to Marian attribute her long life to her unwavering heart, an inexhaustible capacity for love, humor, and expression that powered her each day. Through a life shaped by integrity and fervor, Marian touched all who knew her. It is without question: there has never been anyone like Marian Sautter Anderson, and there never will be.
Marian Sautter Anderson was preceded in death by her parents, Matilda Pauly Sautter and Albert Sautter; her brothers, Albert (“Al”) Sautter and Milton Sautter; her husband, John B. Anderson III; and her son, John B. Anderson IV.
Gallery
Memory wall
Thank You for letting me know that your Amazing Mother has left this mortal coil.
I have been thinking of you a lot lately and wondering how your Wonderful Mother was getting on at almost 105 years of age …..
So grateful to hear she was surrounded in the very Best of care and Love from your Beautiful family.🙏
How Blessed was I to inherit this sculpture that your Mum created…….,
You as a lilttl' gal that your Mama made and gifted to us. to …….
our family ….
so part of yours…..
in many ways…….
Has always been in our family atrium……
Here also is the plaster and leather based sculpture your Mother gifted us when we married 45 years ago. Unfortunately our customs officers in New Zealand thought there must have been something of interest to them hiding inside. The beasts had chipped away all the edges in pursuit ,which my husband, Lachie duly fixed.
Funnily enough they attached a note confessing to their destruction.
Thinking of you all at this sad time.
Sending All my Love and light ❣️
Anniex
She showed me the world beyond our small town through books from Japan, art from decades past, road trips through the desert, and chair lifts to the tops of mountains.
When you visited Ami's house....
There were always fresh flowers on the table, ice cream bars or cream puffs, new sculptures to critique, fresh junque with potential, questions about your life and plenty of time for conversation and laughter.
There are so many lessons she taught me that will live on in me, and that I hope to pass on to my children. Most of all stay curious!
I am mesmerized, inspired, and aching to experience one nanosecond of your mother’s life.
To honor her, we will write one of her quotes every few days on our chalkboard. The first…
‘Find something that makes you lose track of time.’
"Julie, Wendy and Paula,
Thank you for your notice of you mom’s passing. The write-up on your mom’s life was inspiring, fun to read and captured her approach to life…full throttle all the time. You daughters represent her and all she believed in and aspired to do and represent.
My memories go back to first meeting her and Andy in Joliet and the wonderful African American nanny that became a member of your family. Then later in New Lenox. I remember a blue car with a sunflower painted on top…so Aunt Marian…and first hearing Peter, Paul and Mary singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” during that visit. I always associated that group and that song with Aunt Marian. And visits to Palisade’s Park, where my wife Dianne first met the family. And then more recently in South Haven, sometimes spending the night in the guest house. Our family vacationed in the big house one summer. And most recently stopping to visit her as we returned from our annual trip to Mackinac Island. She was always so hospitable and “whipped up” a quick lunch for us. And seeing all the small pictures of sunsets posted on the wall in the house she and Wendy, I think, had painted.
The way she lived her life was inspiring. I still remember her telling me “John, find something you can lose yourself in”…which still inspires me today. We were all blessed for the time we had around her and you girls and your families carry her legacy of living life full throttle.
May you find peace in positive memories.
John and Dianne Sautter "
After a short conversation, I had the feeling that I had known her forever. She was an artist, passionate about art, but she also had something that I think is quite rare nowadays: she truly cared about people and about sharing her love and curiosity with them. Maybe that’s why her spirit met mine.
I only had a few more opportunities to talk with her, so our acquaintance was brief, but it was enough for her to take a lasting place in my heart. Even now, sometimes when I close my eyes, I see Marian talking to me, and it warms my heart and makes me smile. She will always live in my memory—alive, gentle, and present.
This tribute is to the daughters of Marian Anderson, who faithfully served their mother during her illness. Julie, Wendy, and Paula cared for Haas right to the end, helping make her comfortable and allowing her to be in her studio during her last days. I admire them so much, and the role model they provided for so many.
With gratitude, Susan Mooy Cherup
In 2006 Marian Anderson
an amazing artist, visited Toledo School for the Arts and worked with a group of high school visual arts students for one week. They created a piece that has been the center of our garden since. She was in her mid 80’s and the students found her knowledgeable, hardworking, and delightfully funny.
We will continue to protect and preserve this piece as a marking of the time we spent with this beautiful soul.
She was truly remarkable.
I LOVED
I loved sitting on those butterfly chairs with her watching the Michigan Magical sky and talking and joking around. I loved her honesty, watching her make things, eating amazing lunches or dinners as she never was interested in breakfast,I loved her dinner parties of which they seem like they were every weekend, I loved making props for the kids businesses or circuses with her, I loved her friendly way of saying hello often with a quirky twist, I loved her "adios"when saying goodby, I loved her style from head to toe that was off the charts whether she was in her studio alone or at the MOMA in NYC, I loved how she inspired so many people of all ages and imagined projects that might interest them, I loved how she whistled, I loved playing the drawing game with her for 10 hours on a plane ride. Just to name a few. She will always be with me as she has inspired my inner self in so many ways.
Some of my earliest memories are of Paula and I helping plant dune grass in front of their Palisades Park cottage to slow the erosion of the dunes, and burning brush in Deerlick Woods, South Haven, before any of the houses were built. Of course, Haas was right out there cutting and hauling brush with all of us and then cooking her “trailer chicken” - named after their modest travel trailer that was their “base camp” at the time. In fact, aside from Paula, I have never known anyone like Haas who could, in short order, put together delicious meals for large groups of people. Dinners were lively, engaging events where we could share stories, talk politics, and catch up with each other - especially during family reunions.
Haas would often greet me with “What’s the pitch?” She and Andy loved playing doubles tennis and I will never forget how deceptive her detached attitude on the court belied a quiet confidence and attention that yielded many unexpected and winning shots. Similarly, she gained a reputation for her acumen playing Scrabble or Bananagrams. How many times have I seen her come up with a triple-word score in two directions and jump to the lead?
Although she had some hard-nosed opinions, Haas was a tireless advocate for discovering one’s true interests and pursuing them. She wanted to know what we were all doing with our lives and whether she could support us in any way.
Happily, Haas and Andy (or “Ami” and “Boppy” to the kids) were able make yearly trips to visit us in Switzerland and get to know the daily routine we experienced in a French-speaking culture. We planned their visits in line with school holidays and were able to take multiple trips Greece, France, Spain, and Italy.
In recent years, Haas took annual trips for several months at a time to Santa Fe, NM, where she spent much of her time working in the Santa Fe Clay Studio. Paula and I were able to visit her there numerous times and found much common ground in art, culture, politics, and the friends we made. Now, with Haas passing, an era has come to a close, and it is our turn to carry the torch. Fortunately, we are blessed with a treasure trove of memories to cherish and help us on our way.
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