NOTE: Mrs. Charles Biederman died suddenly a week ago today. The eulogy below was written by a Swedish friend who is currently a visiting professor of Scandinavian literature at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, Long Island, N.Y.

By PROFESSOR LEIF SJOBERG

Having enjoyed for many years a close friendship with Charles and Mary Biederman, of Red Wing, I am moved to write a eulogy for Mary, who died suddenly on Aug. 22.

Mary Biederman was such an unassuming, sympathetic and natural person, that nearly everyone who knew her loved and admired her. Because she rarely talked about herself, not everyone had the opportunity I had to know much about her life and work.

Gifted with a sensitive, incisive mind, and a phenomenal memory, she acquired both a classical and professional education and served for several years as a medical secretary and editor at the Mayo Clinic, as well as in New Orleans and Chicago.

Much later she learned new skills and became a teacher of little children in Red Wing at the Burnside School. Mary especially loved children, and they responded with equal warmth to her.

Mary once said, "The children loved to hear me tell stories, and some have told me when I saw them a few years later, that I made things sound exciting and lively."

Her quick memory, especially for details, was the thing. It helped in her teaching, as well as in her work with her artist-husband, Charles Biederman, whom she married in 1941. Since 1942 they have lived in Red Wing where their daughter, Anna (now a children’s librarian in Flint, Michigan), was born.

Charles and Mary Biederman formed a unique team, whose vast achievements have drawn and. will draw ever wider international attention. Her enormously conscientious editorial and research work aided immeasurably Biederman's monumental work, Art as the Evolution of Visual Knowledge (1948).

Mary translated important texts from the French for Biederman’s epoch making analysis, The New Cézanne (1958). She took care of all editorial tasks for her husband’s Letters on the New Art (1951) and other books and essays of his.

She discussed with him, all his new ideas, helped make decisions, typed all his letters, and even assisted him in his shop where he made his art works.

In other words, she was actively, and happily so, involved in all aspects of his work, except creation itself, which she felt remained "wonderful and mysterious" to her.

Her assistance in the formation of "New Art" is crucial. In the most literal sense, she has made "New Art" possible, in itself an amazing feat. It is not too much to say that some day she will be recognized for all she did, and for all she made possible for Charles Biederman to achieve.

Mary Biederman will be honored as loyal to her husband and his ideals, as the best friend to her friends, as the most cheerful, generous, sharing neighbor, as a very considerable intellectual in her own right, and finally as a great, brave woman.

As a girl she used to sing and play the piano, and she loved Mozart’s music the best ("We never play our recordings as background music; it is far too intensive, and demanding an experience to listen,").

In Charles’ art she experienced a visual music, perhaps related to that of Bach and Mozart.

Among the many roles of Mary Biederman’s was that of the gracious hostess. She had the talents and ability to make her modest home a cultural center.

Because of her husband’s forceful, seminal ideas, all kinds of people in the arts – artists, collectors, critics, photographers, poets, composers, musicians, scientists, and professors came to visit. Even occasional museum directors came, especially from England, Holland, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium and Canada.

This is a chapter in cultural exchange still largely unwritten. She treated both famous and unknown people visiting her home with the same natural, captivating charm. A year or so ago she was thrilled when pianist Eugene Istomin came and played some Mozart on the Bidermans’ old Steinway.

Mary liked to travel, but due to pressures of work and circumstance she travelled mainly in her chair, by reading. However, in October 1969, she went with her daughter, Anna, to London to see Charles’ great retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, arranged by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

She was greatly pleased, perhaps almost overwhelmed, when she could have the unique opportunity to view at one time the entire, startling development he had gone through.

It was her "grand tour," which took her on from London to Athens, Delphi, Epidauros (an ancient medical center), and Crete, where she saw the museum at Heracleion.

Finally, perhaps the highlight of her trip, was Aix-en-Provence, where her much admired Cézanne had had his studio, which is now a museum. The museum’s librarian clearly did the right thing by her overseas visitor, because she brought out the copy of Biederman’s book on Cézanne, so that Mary could see "how much it had been read and marked by students who visit the studio."

Her last reading aloud was from a biography of Rembrandt, and the death of his wife, Saskia. What an appropriate ending to read before her own passing!

Leif Sjoberg
Visiting Professor of
Scandinavian Literature
State University of
New York at Stony Brook,
Long Island, and of Sweden