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Recent Honors
2022 Midwest Book Awards:
• Gold Medal and two Silver Medals for:
A Peacemaker for Warring Nations: The Founding of the Iroquois League
• One Silver Medal for:
Spirit of the Cheetah: A Somali Tale
Wisdom Tales
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Sharing the wisdom and beauty of cultures from around the world
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 Catherine Schuon (1924–2021) was a gifted artist, editor, and translator, fluent
in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. She had been painting and drawing since she
was a young child. Catherine also collected children’s books her entire life and she especially enjoyed the children’s
books of illustrator Carol Barker. Catherine was dedicated to helping children appreciate
the beauty of the world’s traditional cultures and their sacred forms of art, which
had inspired her to co-edit A King James Christmas, along with contributing nine of her own paintings to the book. Looking through Catherine Schuon’s art, readers will notice her special interest in animals and her unique gift in capturing the spirit of each one.
Catherine Schuon was born in 1924 in Bern, Switzerland. As the daughter of a career Swiss diplomat,
she traveled a great deal and was exposed to many cultures, particularly in Europe, North Africa, and South
America. She spent her early school years in pre-war Berlin where her father was
the First Secretary at the Swiss embassy in Berlin, before returning to Switzerland
when she was six years old.
Catherine lived in Switzerland until she was thirteen. During that
time, her interest and skill in painting grew. she took painting and art classes in school and excelled at her artwork. Catherine’s
grandmother was a gifted painter and took her into nature to paint landscapes and
flowers; the young Catherine always enjoyed painting animals, too. Her stepfather painted in watercolors, and he also encouraged Catherine to paint. Her mother was a nurse in the mountain
hospital near St Moritz, and Catherine would take her sketchbook and pencil into
the mountains to draw the animals she saw, including the cows and mules that were carrying
milk. She also enjoyed drawing her younger brother and two sisters. And, whenever
she would write letters to family and friends, she would draw illustrations along with the words in
the letters.
When Catherine was thirteen, she and her family moved to Algiers, in Algeria, where her stepfather was
an engineer. At that time Algeria was considered a part of France. She learned French
and had her first contact with the Islamic civilization. She then returned to Switzerland
during World War II, where she studied languages and helped to care for refugee
children. Just as World War II ended, she joined her father, who had been named Swiss
Ambassador to Argentina. While in Argentina, she learned Spanish and developed further
her gift for painting, especially in watercolors. She enjoyed spending her time
painting horses and landscapes as well as the ocean and the “gauchos” (cowboys).
From Argentina, Catherine moved back to Switzerland again with her family. To expand her artistic skills, Catherine worked
as a ceramist with Italian artists and decorated plates and vases. In 1949, she
married the famous writer on religion, Frithjof Schuon, and together they took
many trips to places around the world, including trips to visit their many American Indian friends such as Thomas Yellowtail, the Crow Sun Dance Chief and Medicine Man.
With her gift for languages, Catherine helped
her husband answer his correspondence from his many admirers across the globe for many years. He also encouraged
her to start painting again, which she did in 1967; however, she now decided to work in oil paints
as he did. Inspired by his writings and artwork, she began painting scenes from various
religions, as well as the life of the Blessed Virgin. Among these are the Annunciation,
the Visitation, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt.
Catherine Schuon was also a talented and very precise editor. Besides her work on A King James Christmas, she edited a volume on art from her husband’s writings titled, Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, and had also worked on a number of other editing projects as a consultant.
In 1980, the Schuons moved from Lake Geneva
to southern Indiana. Her husband, Frithjof Schuon, died there in 1998, as did Catherine when she followed him in April, 2021. Over the years, she had had a cat named Tigerli and a dog named Pila who were quite special to her, but her sensitivity to animals extended to all of God’s creatures, as her paintings clearly show. |
Catherine Schuon in the High Alps
of her native Switzerland
Catherine Schuon exploring on horseback
in Argentina
Catherine Schuon with two Native American children during one of her trips to the American Plains tribes
The Adoration of the Magi, painted by Catherine Schuon in 1968
Catherine Schuon relaxing with a furry four-legged friend |
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Copyright © 2012 World Wisdom, Inc.
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