Warehouse, East River
A faceless laborer lifts what appears to be bales of cotton--presumably one of many for New York's textile and garment industries. The etching's dark, cross-hatched interior contrasts with a view of docks, tugboat, and buildings seen through the doorwary. The anonymous toil depicted here would have been paralleled by sharecroppers in the South, although a market crash there preciptated a "great migration" north. About the Artist: Born in Beijing, China, Grambs was the granddaughter of a Baptist missionary and daughter of what she later termed an “exploitive businessman”; she grew up in Tian-Jing but felt isolated because Europeans didn’t interact with the Chinese. In 1934, she received an Art Students League scholarship that enabled her to emigrate to New York. She was greatly influenced by Harry Sternberg’s printmaking class—how the medium enabled direct confrontation with social injustices—and was active in several Popular Front organizations. As James Wechsler writes, Grambs’ work in printmaking coincided with government support for progressive artists: “Through the FAP, art became an integral part of the New Deal’s objective of treating the intangible symptoms of a demoralized nation...giving visual from to what President Roosevelt called the ‘nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance’” (383-384). Her NDG print “Warehouse, East River” appeared in a 1936 WPA show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of 25 lithographs that she produced for the federal program. Grambs was deeply involved with the Artists’ Union and its efforts to preserve public funding for the arts amidst conservative reaction. In 1936, her former teacher Sternberg arranged for a group of artists to visit the minefields of Pennsylvania; many of her most powerful prints date to this period, showing the intersectionality of labor and ecological exploitation. She relocated to Europe briefly in 1939 but returned via a harrowing journey as borders closed. Grambs never worked in printmaking again, making her living initially as an illustrator for Woman’s Day magazine and eventually for more than 30 children’s books (sometimes under the name Grambs Miller). Many of these books evoked an affirmative vision of nature (a far cry from the Pennsylvania coal fields) that was perhaps influenced by Rachel Carson and an emergent environmental movment: Hummingbirds in the Garden (1969) Mushrooms and Molds (1972); The Young Grizzly; Plant Fun (1974); and Roots are Food Finders (1975). 15 works at National Gallery of Art. 8 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 16 works at Metropolitan Museum of Art. 9 works at the Newark Museum. 4 more images at FAP. Sources consulted: James Wechsler, “The Great Depression and the Prints of Blanche Grambs,” Print Quarterly 13.4 (Dec. 1996): 376-396.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18166
Ritz, Abigail (photograph) Cooper, Ken (biography)
076
The Blue Beads
A table, whose covering appears to have been folded back, becomes the space for an arrangement of flowers in a vase and a beaded necklace in a ceramic dish. Cool blues, grays, and burgundys predominate. The flat picture plane, absence of background space, and diagonal (even tilted) lines combine create an unstable space--the Blue Beads seem to be spilling out of the dish. About the Artist: Born in St. Louis, MO, Harris moved to New York in 1920 and studied at the Art Students League with Max Weber. There he met other students with whom he would collaborate in the years ahead, eventually exhibiting along with Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, and others at a 1928 show at Opportunity Galleries. In 1934 Harris joined the new Secession Gallery, then left a year later to co-found "The Ten", a collective of expressionist painters upholding abstract art at a time when the Whitney Museum was shifting its emphasis to social realism. They argued that their mission was “a protest against the reputed equivalence of American painting and literal painting... [instead seeing] objects and events as though for the first time, free from the accretions of habit and divorced from the conventions of a thousand years of painting.” The group, which also included Rothko, Lou Schanker, Adolph Gottlieb, and Ben-Zion, held group shows between 1935-39. At their final show, NDG artist David Burliuk was included. Harris’s painting “Water Tanks” was selected for a 1938 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Bena Frank, Herman Copen, and Tomizo “Thomas” Nagai also appeared. 3 works at Kemper Art Museum. 1 work at Rose Art Museum. 2 more images at FAP. His papers are at Syracuse University.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18169
Federal Art Project
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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Still image
079
May Flowers
A table is the support for a grecian looking vase containing flowers including carnations, daisies, irises, lilies, and babies breath. These colorful flowers stick out against a dull brown background. Some of the flowers are noticeably droopy and the shading shows there is light hitting the vase from the left. About the Artist: Born in Gypsum, KS, Swishers appears to have been somewhat of a provocateur from a young age; he started his own newspaper at age eleven and by the next year had been made an honorary member of the State Editorial Association. He studied with Harry M. Walcott at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later with Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian, Paris. In Chicago, he was among a group who formed the Independent Art Society, seeking representation for local painters (Chicago Tribune 26 Feb. 1916: 11). His works were exhibited at places like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Academy of Design. For a time Swisher taught art at the University of Kentucky, meanwhile supplementing his income through portrait painting. Judging from peppery letters to the editor over the years, Swisher never lost his interest in the life of a newspaperman. 14 more images at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18277
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Closser, Paige (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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184
Anemones
A table, whose covering appears to have been warped, becomes the space for an arrangement of anemones in a copper vase suspended by a thin spiraled black steel stand. An ashtray accompanies the flowers on the table, standing in the foreground. Cool blues and greens are incorporated on the ashtray, and deep purple, reds, and greens predominate in the flowers. An excess amount of leaves, uncommon for anemones, are included in the bouquet, spiraling down the vase and onto the ashtray. The structured, stable and neutral background space, combined with the possibly unstable vase and table, juxtaposes the stability of the space and time period as a whole. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you’re able to help. 2 works, as Bertha Stefano, for the Index of American Design.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Counsel on the Arts Object #FA18275
Ritz, Abigail (photographer) Caldwell, Julia (biography)
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182
Central Park
The painting captures NYC’s Central Park on a shadowy afternoon. Cool purples, blues, and greens make up the majority of the image. Trees, bushes, and greenery blend into buildings and cares that make up the city skyline in the background, producing a sense of fluidity. In the foreground, a bridge with coursing river underneath divides the painting. Behind the bridge, the perspective appears to be flattened, almost as if to create dissonance. About the Artist: Born in Duluth, MN, where his father worked as a train dispatcher for the railroad, Spurbeck studied at the Minneapolis School of Art and later at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1935 he relocated to New York, producing work in oils, water colors, and portrait sketches. It is possible that Spurbeck may have spent some time at the University of Rochester before eventually relocating to Maryland. In 1940 he took a position as director of the illustration division at the Johns Hopkins University, working both an artist and photographer for the biology department, contributing medical illustrations of equipment and specimens. Spurbeck’s wife, Mary (née Rawles), worked as a staff member for the embryology department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which was also located on the Johns Hopkins campus. The couple retired together in 1966 to Emporia, VA, Mary’s hometown, where he continued to paint, draw, and sculpt.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18274
Ritz, Abigail (photographer) Sheedy, Marianna (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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181
Girl with Tulips
A pale-skinned young woman with blue eyes and brown hair, wearing a blue day dress, lifts a single red tulip stem from a vase of five red tulips. Mirroring the dark brown background, a round, wooden table is the stable platform for the two-handled white vase which holds the tulips. The woman's thoughtful stare evokes a dreamlike sense of nostalgia. About the Artist: We haven't located much reliable information about this artist. Elsie Wein may have immigrated to the United States from Hungary. Some records indicate that during the 1920s she may have lived in Baltimore, MD and showed her paintings there. There also is an intriguing reference to a WBNY radio program, “Art Talk,” with an Elsie Wein as its host during the late 1920s and early ‘30s. In any event, a painter of this name worked for the WPA in at least two programs. 9 more works at the Index of American Design. 3 more images at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18365
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Anderson, Justin (biography)
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Still Image
193
Local Stop
A local town is represented as a train stop, hinted at beyond a hill. It appears to be either fall or the middle of a drought, as the colors used are warm—mostly reds, oranges, and yellows—with the corn and surrounding vegetation brown and yellow. These colors contrast with the sky, which composes two thirds of the canvas, and is blue with cumulous clouds. Terrell’s painting is diagonally composed, and the left half of it seems more modernized, with its large buildings and what appear to be telephone poles and electric wires running to the buildings, in contrast to the right, which has telegraph wires and a small silo or water tower. About the Artist: Born in Toledo, OH, Terrel spent most of her young life in Florida—her father was a bookkeeper—and studied at the Ringling School of Art and Design before moving to New York in 1932 after winning a scholarship to the Art Students League. The body of Terrell’s work is nearly impossible to imagine apart from the New Deal: her paintings appeared in the “New Horizons of American Art” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by FAP director Holger Cahill, and in WPA traveling shows like “New York Watercolors,” “Country Cross-Section,” and “America Through American Eyes.” Terrell also painted two post office murals for the WPA: “The Ploughman” (1940), in Conyers, GA; and “Reforestation” (1942), in Starke, FL. In 1936, along with Albert Potter, she created an imaginative five-part “History of the USA” mural at City Hospital children’s room on Welfare Island (now called Roosevelt Island). Meanwhile her work appeared in such galleries as the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts. She regularly showed in and around Woodstock, NY. 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 1 work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 works at Woodstock Artists Association and Museum. 2 works at the Sheldon Museum of Art. 1 work at University of Arizona Museum of Art. 31 more images at FAP.
New Deal Art Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object # FA18278
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cannioto, Sydney (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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185
Close Relations
A table, draped in eggshell cloth and situated in front of a curtain of the same color, holds a vase containing cherry blossoms, a tea cup, a decorated box—perhaps a tea chest?—and a small statue of a frog. Each of the items seems to evoke East Asian influences, such as the woman on the vase wearing a Japanese kimono, and the frog, a traditional symbol of good luck in Japan. The painting’s title alludes to myriad connections in the world, an encompassing family including but not limited to humans. A few blossoms on the table subtly remind us of temporal change. About the Artist: Born in Baltimore, MD, Theobald was the eldest child of a famous eye surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. After attending college at that institution, where he was an artist for the school annual, he worked briefly as a caricaturist for the Baltimore Afternoon News (“Art News”). Early in Theobald’s career, he studied with André Castaigne, the popular French illustrator and painter. He was present to witness the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, sketching from Federal Hill and creating a lurid painting of fire and smoke that was described as “very appalling” in its sublime effect (“Picture”). Theobald began dividing his time betwen Baltimore and New York around 1900, his main interests to that point focused upon sporting art. In 1915, he married Elizabeth Sturtevant, a sculptor, and exhibited his work in venues like the Corcoran Gallery, the Beginning in the mid-1920s, the divided their time between Staten Island and Orlando, FL. They received permission from the Ringling Brothers to spend several months at the circus’s winter home in Sarasota, resulting in distinctive works like sculptural castings of “Miss Congo” the gorilla, and paintings of bareback riders, clowns on stilts, and “Elephant Being Manicured” (“Theobald Art”). 5 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: “Picture of the Great Fire,” Baltimore Sun 12 Mar. 1904: 6; “Art News from Baltimore,” American Art News 3.71 (18 Mar. 1905): 5; “Theobald Art Exhibitions on Display In New Showing of Art Association,” Orlando Sentinel 17 Mar. 1929: 15.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18280
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Noel, Richard (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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187
Winter Night
This painting depicts a snowy mountainside. Tall, dark trees contrast the lighter highlights of the snow around them. In the distance, two mountain peaks are visible against the skyline. The trees progressively grow smaller in the distance, creating an element of perspective that makes the mountains tower over the foreground. The silhouettes of birds are seen flying over the ground, creating one source of movement in an otherwise completely still winter landscape. About the Artist: Born in Vienna, Austria, Widlizka (also Widliczka and Widlicka) studied with Joseph-Eugen Hörwarter in that city and then Nikolaus Gyzis in Munich. He was influenced by the art circles surrounding Franz von Lenbach and Hermann von Kaulbach. Returning to Vienna, Widlizka was among those artists of the so-called “Vienna Secession” who resigned from the more mainstream Association of Austrian Artists. During World War I he worked for the War Press Office, later registering the consequences of that conflict in his painting “Family Fate, 1918.” Widlizka immigrated to the United States in 1922 with his father and mother. He appears to have been comfortable with a range of subject matter: urban cityscapes, natural landscapes, and portraits. 7 more images at FAP. Source Consulted: Wikipedia Germany.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18367
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Bangsil, Kristopher (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
195
July Flowers
A clear glass vase holds a bouquet of mostly red flowers, with one yellow flower in the center. These flowers are thought to be zinnias. The goblet-like vase is sitting on a table draped over with a red patterned tablecloth. The background is a patterned, blue and light-brown wallpaper, leaving the bouquet of flowers to stand out with their bright colors. About the Artist: Born in Gypsum, KS, Swishers appears to have been somewhat of a provocateur from a young age; he started his own newspaper at age eleven and by the next year had been made an honorary member of the State Editorial Association. He studied with Harry M. Walcott at the Art Institute of Chicago, and later with Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian, Paris. In Chicago, he was among a group who formed the Independent Art Society, seeking representation for local painters (Chicago Tribune 26 Feb. 1916: 11). His works were exhibited at places like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Academy of Design. For a time Swisher taught art at the University of Kentucky, meanwhile supplementing his income through portrait painting. Judging from peppery letters to the editor over the years, Swisher never lost his interest in the life of a newspaperman. 14 more images at FAP.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council of the Arts Object #FA18276
1937
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Apthorpe, Jessica (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
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183