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MARUJA BALDWIN

Maruja Baldwin (November 19, 1921-November 25, 1997), also known as Maruja Ploss, was a Los Angeles-based fashion model from the late 1940’s through the early 1960s. She subsequently married Baldwin M. Baldwin and became best known as a philanthropist and the donor of the Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection of Toulouse-Lautrec to the San Diego Museum of Art.

Biography

Maruja (de los Angeles Christina Isabel Pacheco Cooper) was born in San Jose, Costa Rica from a long-established family. The youngest of five children, she was educated at a convent school. Both of her parents died when she was young and she left Costa Rica in 1942 to find a better life for herself in Los Angeles. Upon arriving in wartime Los Angeles, she soon met and married a young aviator, Paul James Ploss.

In the late 1940s, Maruja started working at the May Company as a model. She quickly moved on from there and started working for a number of Los Angeles based fashion designers, among them Edith Head, Irene, Dior, Helen Rose, Travilla, Adrian, Don Loper, and Rudi Gernrich. In her work, she traveled to both New York and Europe.

Maruja’s thick Spanish accent limited her ability to work in the movies. Nevertheless, she appeared in several movies in small parts.

In 1966, Maruja married Baldwin M. Baldwin, the grandson of Elias “Lucky” Baldwin, a prominent businessman who made his fortune in the Comstock Lode. Baldwin M. Baldwin was, among other things, a well-known art collector. Baldwin’s Toulouse-Lautrec collection included all of the artist’s posters, making it the most extensive collection of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work in the United States. In 1988, she donated the collection to the San Diego Museum of Art.