Cantieni, Margaret Agatha Balzer (1914-2002)

Date of Birth: 1914 April 30, Kansas
Date of Death: 2002 February 13, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Obituary on Geni.com website (https://www.geni.com/people/Margaret-Cantieni/6000000042635367749):

Obituary No. 1 for Margaret (Balzer) Cantieni:

Margaret Cantieni, 87, formerly of Bethlehem, died Feb. 13 in Blough Health Care Center, Bethlehem. She was the wife of Joseph F. Cantieni, who died in 1995. A 1936 graduate of Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., she was an art teacher for Swain School and Baum School of Art, both of Allentown, and Southern Lehigh High School, Center Valley. Previously, she taught art for Berea (Kentucky) College, 1937-45. Born in Newton, Kan., she was a daughter of the late Jacob F. and J. Alieda (van der Smissen) Balzer. She was a member of Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting, where she was a leader for the religious education of children and pastoral care of members. She was a former president of the Lehigh Art Alliance, 1973-75, and member of the League of Women Voters of the Lehigh Valley and the Lehigh Pocono Committee of Concern. She exhibited works in shows, 1940-1997, with exhibitions at Lehigh University, the Kemerer Museum, Bethlehem, and through the Lehigh Art Alliance. Berea College was the host of a one-woman show of her works in 1946 and a homecoming retrospective in 1978. Survivors: Sons, Piero of Cle Elum, Wash., David of West Deerfield, Mass.; sisters, Wilma of Bethlehem, Charlotte McGrath of Redmond, Wash.; a grandson.

Memorial services: To be announced. No calling hours. Arrangements, Downing Funeral Home, Bethlehem.

Contributions: American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia.

Obituary No. 2 for Margaret (Balzer) Cantieni:

Cantieni art cards started out as gifts

December 08, 2002|By Frank Whelan Of The Morning Call

Jan Larsen, guest curator for the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts' Gift Giving through the Ages exhibit, first got to know artist and card designer Margaret Cantieni at the local Quaker meeting they attended. "I knew her for about three years. She was the type of person who seemed to emanate love. It almost glowed from her," says Larsen. Cantieni lived alone after her husband, Joseph, died in 1995. Later, when she entered a nursing home, Cantieni asked Larsen to go through the art items in her home. "I think she must have saved everything," recalls Larsen. In the basement, Larsen found a scrapbook that included all of Cantieni's Christmas cards dating back to 1936. It also included a number of other Christmas-related art objects the Cantienis had created. Fortunately, most of those items were properly labeled, making Larsen's work easy. Larsen would take those that weren't labeled to Cantieni at the nursing home. "Some of them she knew right away. Others she would look at and say, "I am not sure what I was doing with that, it was so long ago,"' Larsen recalls. The Cantienis were not lifelong residents of the Lehigh Valley. Margaret Cantieni was born in Newton, Kan., in 1914. She grew up in Northfield, Minn., where her father was a minister, and went to Carlton College from 1932 to 1936. It was there she studied with her mentor, artist Mary Ela. And it was there she created her first-known Christmas card, a swirling shaped Art Deco-style Madonna and child. From 1937 to 1945, Cantieni was an art instructor at Berea College in Berea, Ky., a small liberal arts school with a reputation for progressive education. It is there that she met her husband, also an art instructor at the college. They were married in 1946.

In 1940, Cantieni took a course at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., with artist Moholy-Nagy. It was her first major contact with a Bauhaus artist, a member the influential modernist German art movement of the 1920s who had fled to America after the rise of the Nazis led to the closing of the Bauhaus in 1933. In 1945, Cantieni took a summer course at Black Mountain College in North Carolina with Josef Albers, another Bauhaus artist. Joseph Cantieni also studied with Albers, taking a furniture design course at Harvard with him in 1950. Albers' ideas had a major impact on the Cantienis' art works.

In 1947, the Cantienis moved to the Lehigh Valley. Her husband ran Muhlenberg College's art program until it lost funding in 1951. From then until he retired in 1976, Joseph was employed by Bethlehem Steel as an all-purpose company artist. He did everything from making metal sculptures for the desks of company officials to designing furniture and drapes. He also did a wide variety of abstract sculptures for public places in Bethlehem. During that time period, his wife was raising their two sons, Piero and David, and teaching art at the Swain School, Baum School of Art and local public schools. Both Cantienis also were active in local arts movements. They were long-time members of the Lehigh Art Alliance, a group of painters who championed art in general and modern art.

The Christmas cards that the Cantienis produced, both alone and as a couple, reflected their training and belief in modern art. Lines swirl into the shape of Wise Men bearing gifts, camels and shepherds. In 1954, the couple took the doodles of their 4-year-old, Piero, and incorporated some of the shapes into that year's Christmas card. Some of the Cantienis' figures have a jumpy rhythm, as if they are dancing. Others offer commentary on contemporary events. One done at the height of World War II in 1942 is based on the biblical verse "They shall beat their swords into plowshares." In it, Cubist-looking plows are being pulled by Cubist-looking horses. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1970, the Cantienis sent a Christmas card with words "poverty, hunger, crime and terror" printed on it. That card seems to echo that era's social concerns. But the Cantienis' deep religious faith and love of modern art is what is mirrored most in their Christmas cards.

Shortly before Margaret Cantieni's death, Larsen recalls her saying, "Soon I am going to be painting the halls of heaven."

In a sense, with her Christmas cards, Margaret Cantieni already has.

---

MLA Personal Photos Collection

Biographical note:
Newton, Kansas
Daughter of Jacob Frank and Jennie Alieda (van der Smissen) Balzer (wife 1)
Married Joseph F. Cantieni 1945 June 14, Berea, Kentucky
Artist, teacher -- Kentucky, Pennsylvania

Bethel alumni note:

Photo holdings:
See Jacob Frank Balzer (1884-1970) for family photos

Sources:
Die Mennonitenfamilie vds ... 1987, p. 236
B. Bargen's Hiebert Gen. cards No. 111-111
Grandma Profile 31397
Geni.com genealogical record