This following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.  

MARIE “MARLI” STURZENEGGER (September 26, 1907 – November 3, 1987)

A.K.A. “Marly Sturzenegger,” “Marie Hofstatter”

Painter in oil, muralist, sculptor. Born in Reute, St. Gallen, Switzerland, the daughter of Rosina Marie Leimbacher (1877 – 1970) and Alfred Sturzenegger (1878 – 1966). The family emigrated to the United States, arriving aboard the steamer Adriatic in New York in November of 1910, eventually settling in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Marie Sturzenegger attended Kenosha High School where she won the Seminary Chemistry prize in 1924 and was one of the illustrators of the school’s monthly magazine, The Spy. She graduated from Kenosha High School in 1925 as the class valedictorian.

She traveled to Illinois where she trained at the Carbondale Union and at the Art Institute of Chicago (briefly). After her time at the Art Institute, Sturzenegger continued her studies under several prominent Chicago artists, including muralist John W. Norton (1876 – 1934). In the 1930s she also studied fresco painting and lithography in New York City under the noted printmaker, Jean Charlot (1898 – 1979). Following her studies, she was employed as a designer for an interior decorating studio and later for several furniture stores.

During the early-to-mid 1930s, Sturzenegger spoke for various groups in Wisconsin on interior decorating and her work as an artist and muralist. During the war, she was employed by the Anaconda American Brass Company in support of the war effort. Following the conclusion of World War II she traveled back to Europe, where she met and then married Dr. Moritz Hofstatter (1907 – 1990) in Zurich, Switzerland in 1953. They initially settled in New York, then lived in Elgin, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But by the mid-1970s she and her husband were residing in San Diego, California, but planning to move back to Kenosha shortly thereafter. Then in 1983 they moved to Wichita, Kansas, where she ran a day care for a short time. They would eventually return again to Kenosha.

Marie Sturzenegger died in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, the 3rd of November 1987 at the age of eighty years. Her services were handled by the Proko Funeral Home in Kenosha, the location of her burial is currently unknown.

As an artist, little today is known about Sturzenegger. She completed a number of murals during her heyday, including in churches in Chicago, schools in Wisconsin, one in the student union of the University of Illinois and another in 1952 for her brother Gene’s P & G Hardware Store in Kenosha. She was also known for her carved, bas reliefs which were created for homes in the greater Chicago area. While she was known as a prolific painter, only one example of an oil painting is currently known, signed and dated 1944, it depicts a sweeping landscape, very much in the style associated with the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.).

At present, there are no exhibitions known in which Sturzenegger participated. Her works are not known to be in any public collections; however, they reside in private collections throughout the United States.