Martha Sawyers Biography
Martha Sawyers left Texas for New York City after her graduation from Victoria High School in the early 1920's. While studying at the Art Students League, she met her future husband, William Ruesswig, a young artist who was to become her collaborator on two travel books, "India and South East Asia" and "The Illustrated Book About the Far East" completed in 1961 and 1964. The talented team of Sawyers and Ruesswig became World War II correspondents and brought back in paintings a pictorial account of the war. The China War Relief posters were done in 1942 and 1943 by Sawyers.

Martha designed Broadway Playbills and art work which is now in the Museum of the City of New York for the theater section of the New York Herald Tribune in the 1930's. Martha Sawyers also portrayed covers for movie magazines, covers for American Liberty and Collier's Magazines in the thirties and forties. Martha drew illustrations for novelist Pearl Buck, and she is featured with such notables as Norman Rockwell in "Forty Illustrators and How They Work" by Earnest W Watson.

The artist is listed in "Who's Who of American Women" in 1972-73 for on-the-spot portraits for the New York Herald Tribune, the editorial illustrations for Collier's and Life Magazines, and her one-woman shows for the Society of Illustrators and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Galleries in New York, Texas, Arizona, Bolivia and Bali have exhibited Martha Sawyer's works. Martha Sawyers presently resides in San Antonio, Texas.