Lilian Swann Saarinen

Lilian Louisa Swann Saarinen (April 17, 1912 – May 22, 1995) was an American sculptor, artist, and writer. She was the first wife of Finnish-American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen, with whom she sometimes collaborated. Early life She was born in New York City to Dr. Arthur Wharton Swann and his wife Susan Ridley Sedgwick. Her father unexpectedly died in 1914, when Lily was aged two and her sister Lucy was four. She attended Miss Chapin's School in Manhattan, and spent her summers studying sculpture in Connecticut. She first seriously studied art at the Art Students League of New York with Alexander Archipenko, and later with Albert Stewart, Heinz Warneke, and Brenda Putnam. She moved to Michigan where she studied under Carl Milles at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. During her teenage years, she spent her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in St. Anton am Arlberg in Austria. She was an alternate on the first U.S. Women's alpine ski team at the 1936 Winter Olympics. Marriage She met Eero Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy, where his father, architect Eliel Saarinen, was a faculty member. She married Eero on June 10, 1939, and they had two children: Eric Saarinen, born 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born 1945. They divorced in 1954, and she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.