Jean Thalinger (1915-1965) -- student

Son of the painter Oscar Thalinger, Frederic Jean Thalinger was born in St. Louis (1915). He attended Antioch College (Yellow Springs, OH), Washington University (St. Louis, MO), the Art Institute of Chicago, and summered at Stone City with Grant Wood. Thalinger also completed classes in ceramics at the University of Cincinnati and became well-known as a sculptor, commonly welding copper or other metals. As an artist, he also used soap, stone, and clay in seminal works.

In 1941, Thalinger was teaching sculpture at Chicago's Hull House when he met Ciel Frampton, an artist and activist who co-founded the Consumer's Union in 1930. The two soon married and, that same year, created the "Sun Mobile" sculpture. Displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the work received high praise from critics for its representation of the earth and sun. Ciel continued her life as a political advocate, and the pair moved to Ossining, New York, where they taught sculpture for six years (1940s). Jean's masterwork, "The Defenders," was placed into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian, and the Thalingers returned to St. Louis to continue their art. He died there in 1965; Ciel later relocated to Marin County, California (Bolinas, CA), where she died in September 1996. The couple's son, Ernest Thalinger, collected many of his father's personal papers and donated them to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, where they can be viewed by the public.