Sasha Morgenthaler

Once she grabbed a nail file and scraped off her doll's false grin..." In her own words, "No grotesque caricature can awaken a child's true feelings.

Paul Klee orchestrated Morgenthaler's entry to the School of Fine Arts at Geneva.

Dolls were produced in different styles, wearing different clothes, and with subtle variations (mostly in painting) that individualize and particularize each.

Asymmetrical and made of hard vinyl with elastic stringing enabling them to take poses, Sasha dolls are characterized by a serious, open expression that seems to make them more adaptable to imaginative play than if they were forever smiling.

Morgenthaler's original idea was for the dolls to represent an image of universal childhood, so from the beginning of mass-production, the vinyl was coffee-coloured so that they would not appear to belong to any one ethnic group.

The rarest ones can fetch high prices on auction sites such as eBay and from individual dealers.

Sasha Morgenthaler (ca. 1950)
Bust of Morgenthaler, produced by her friend, the sculptor Karl Geiser , from her grave at the cemetery of Hönggerberg in Zurich.
Sasha doll, designed by Sasha Morgenthaler. Goetz, "No Navel" series, around 1970.
The tombstone with Morgenthaler's bust (right) and the grave slab from her now dissolved grave that she shared with her husband at the cemetery of Hönggerberg in Zurich. On the left is the tombstone of Karl Geiser with his bust.