Early Life and Artistic Training
As a young girl during the Great Depression, Schwartz experimented with slate, mud, sticks, and chalk as free materials for making art. She studied to become a nurse under a World War II education program and later on found her training in anatomy, biology, and the use of plaster valuable in making art. Stationed in Japan during the postwar occupation in an area between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she contracted polio, which paralyzed her for a time. As part of her rehabilitation, she studied calligraphy with the artist Tshiro.
After her return to the United States, she continued to experiment with media, including metal and plastic sculpture. In this period, she had to have surgery for a thyroid tumor, possibly from exposure to plastic solvents.
Read more about this topic: Lillian Schwartz
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