An alert jay sits upon a tree branch in the foreground, with billow of leaves or some other foliage in the midground. In the distance, we see the turret of a large building. Nakamizo’s decision to render this scene as an engraving turns it into a study of patterns, both upon the bird and in its habitat. At lower left is text indicating it was created for the Federal Art Project. About the Artist: Born in Fukuiken, Japan, Nakamizo—whose name sometimes was spelled “Fugi”—immigrated to the US in 1907, living in Grand Rapids, MI and working as a decorator. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond and Joseph Pennell. During the early 1920s, he appears to have created an etching of the medical researcher Dr. Hideyo Noguchi that hung in the Nippon Club, New York (Piper). By the 1930s he was fairly well known, especially for his etchings of birds, and exhibited at places like the League Gallery (1933), Montross Gallery (1934), the Brooklyn Museum (1935), the Art Institute of Chicago (1935); and the Carl Fischer Gallery (1936). In 1936 he contributed photographs and illustrations to feminist author Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto’s East Way, West Way: A Modern Japanese Girlhood. In 1943, Nakamizo’s etching “Emblem of Strength and Courage” was chosen for a national exhibition sponsored by the group Artists for Victory; this painting of an American eagle surrounded by warplanes may have been ironic, since some sources place him at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at Lowe Art Museum. 6 works at Queens Library. 1 work at the National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP. Sources consulted: Jean Piper, “Scientist Acts Like Human Dynamo,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 6 Mar. 1927: 85; Ellen G. Landau, Artists for Victory: An Exhibition Catalog (Library of Congress, 1983).
Currently known as the Malayan Peacock-Pheasant, it is represented here by Nakamizo somewhat outside of its normal forest habitat for the purposes of a carefully arranged display. In flattened space the bird’s striking eye-spots are unique in their color and shape; an array of rocks and autumnal leaves surround them. Its bright orange-red around the eye, as in this painting, appears only when it is courting—a decision perhaps more aesthetic than ornithological on Nakamizo’s part. About the Artist: Born in Fukuiken, Japan, Nakamizo—whose name sometimes was spelled “Fugi”—immigrated to the US in 1907, living in Grand Rapids, MI and working as a decorator. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond and Joseph Pennell. During the early 1920s, he appears to have created an etching of the medical researcher Dr. Hideyo Noguchi that hung in the Nippon Club, New York (Piper). By the 1930s he was fairly well known, especially for his etchings of birds, and exhibited at places like the League Gallery (1933), Montross Gallery (1934), the Brooklyn Museum (1935), the Art Institute of Chicago (1935); and the Carl Fischer Gallery (1936). In 1936 he contributed photographs and illustrations to feminist author Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto’s East Way, West Way: A Modern Japanese Girlhood. In 1943, Nakamizo’s etching “Emblem of Strength and Courage” was chosen for a national exhibition sponsored by the group Artists for Victory; this painting of an American eagle surrounded by warplanes may have been ironic, since some sources place him at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at Lowe Art Museum. 6 works at Queens Library. 1 work at the National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP. Sources consulted: Jean Piper, “Scientist Acts Like Human Dynamo,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 6 Mar. 1927: 85; Ellen G. Landau, Artists for Victory: An Exhibition Catalog (Library of Congress, 1983).
Groups of like flowers, often in threes, are gathered into a roughly symmetrical bouquet along its vertical axis. The planter has no visible pattern; the wallpaper behind is defined via colors instead of pattern. Judging from highlights upon the planter and a shadow at right, sunshine filtering in from the left is quite strong. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. He exhibited his work at the Salons of America (1928), Chrysler Gallery (1932), and the Municipal Art Committee (1936). Ruth L. Benjamin described him as painting “portraits and still life, but seems to be at his best in landscape work” (Parnassus 7.5 [1935]: 15). He may have lived in Los Angeles beginning in the late 1930s. 2 more images at FAP.
At lower left, a tight cluster of houses is set along the same plane as a plateau running to the right; in the distance are gentle hills of a comparable height, and beyond that taller mountains in blue. In the basin between them we see the broad green fields that give Nagai’s monoprint its name, a space that with a change of color could be a lake. Tiny dots of yellow and orange across the fields may indicate houses on the opposite side, in which case the basin is massive. Subtle etchings in the paint convey ground contours, brush, and tree foliage—the grassfields are a fine-grained texture of their own. About the Artist: Born in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, Nagai immigrated to the US in 1906, initially with a plan to study law but soon returning to his love of art—a grandfather and uncle both had been painters. In New York he studied at the Art Students’ League with Thomas Hart Benton for five years, whose influence can be seen in Nagai’s “Picnic” (1929) with its treatment of massy figures arranged in deep space. In 1928 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s art critic, Helen Appleton Read, singled out Nagai’s painting “Tea” as one of three “discoveries” from more than 1,000 exhibits at the Society of Independent Artists. He went on to exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Musuem of Art, and the ACA Gallery, among many venues. His “Japanese Landscape” appeared in a 1939 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Bena Frank, and Herman Copen also appeared. Many of In 1936 Nagai signed the Call for the American Artists’ Congress, an anti-fascist popular front organization. Near the end of his life Nagai and his artist wife Paula Rosen retired to Orlando, FL area. 1 work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 2 more images at FAP.
The references in this uncanny painting aren’t clear. At the front of a stage we see a performer, seemingly dressed as a princess and like Cinderella wearing only a single slipper. She holds in her hand a white flower. Behind her, peeking out from seven “legs” receding into the distance, are stylized characters who seem to be drawn from folk tales: a king and queen, a dour stepsister, and so on. The scene is framed by footlights, curtains, and at far right a rope pull reaches out to us invitingly. Mearns’ title references a yearly festival in Barcelona; the painting’s anarchic energy also may derive from her experience with Hervey White’s summer “Maverick Festival” productions. About the Artist: Born Emma Mearns in Philadelphia, at age 19 she married the poet Laurence Jordan, was divorced from him in 1931, and then married medical writer and publisher Blake Cabot in 1937 (he died in 1974). Petra Cabot, as she was known thereafter, began work for designer Russel Wright in 1939, on his “Food Focal” exhibit at the World’s Fair in New York City. In 1947, President Harry S Truman denounced modern art as “the vaporings of half-baked, lazy people....There is no art at all in connection with the modernists, in my opinion.” Mearns-Cabot was one of the Woodstock Art Association members to sign a letter rebuking Truman: “[W]hen a man in high public office chooses to denounce and condemn a large and important group of artists, because he happens to dislike their art, it becomes a matter of immediate and grave concern to all artists” (Kingston Daily Freeman 23 June 1947: 3). In 1952 she made her best-known contribution to American design with the Skotch Kooler, which refashioned metal “minnow buckets” into attractive and affordable picnic totes that became ubiquitous throughout that decade (“How”). Throughout her long life Mearns-Cabot continued to create in a variety of forms: painting, drawing, woodblock, illustrations for books and educational filmstrips, jewelry, and mixed media. 5 works at Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. 2 works at Woodstock School of Art. Sources Consulted: Douglas Martin, “Petra Cabot, Designer of the 1950s-Era Skotch Kooler, Dies at 99,” New York Times 29 Oct. 2006: A26; “How Two Young Men Saved an Ailing Business,” Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine Aug. 1953: 31-32.
In stark contrast to Dutch pronk still-lifes, known for their ostentatious display of exotic objects, we see here a much humbler setting and collection. A rough wooden table (albeit polished enough to reflect fruit resting upon it) is nestled against dark brown walls. A colorful vase and striking succulant plant displace us from the struggles of life during the 1930s; a battered fedora hat at lower right returns us to them. About this Artist: We haven’t been able to identify this artist. Please contact us if you have more information.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18212
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
This dramatic view of a coastal shoreline and shipwreck is lit with the light pinks and blues of twilight. At left, a rocky coast and cliffs in the background; in the foreground, breaking waves and foamy aquamarines. The abandoned ship itself tilts upon rocks and amidst ocean swells testifying to the area’s danger. A few tattered remnants of sails leave us wondering what happened, and how long ago. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Born in Warsaw, Poland, Morosoff immigrated to the US in 1904 and became a citizen in 1936 under the name William Morton. He moved to Los Angeles, CA in the late 1930s. His NDG painting shows an interest in maritime art with an historical bent, which included other paintings such as “U.S.S. Constitution” and “Caravels of Columbus.” His FAP painting “Battle Fleet Maneuvers” was allocated to the Fourth Battalion US Reserves on Long Island. 6 more images at FAP.
A beautiful and delicately lit scene of trees in a field of snow suggests, via its background, that we are in a valley at some considerable elevation. Against the placid light and colors is an arrangement of trees that reveal the struggle for existence: at left a broken limb lies upon the ground, another tree leans at an angle and the dramatically curved main trunk of a third all testify to the forces of wind, snow, and altitude. About the Artist: We haven’t been able to identify this artist. Please contact us if you have more information.
Luminous still life is not so much about the objects arranged here but how the light plays off them. In a cobolt-blue vase decorated with a rose pattern, we see a bouquet of roses at their peak of beauty and nearly glowing in the soft light. As a traditional symbol of fleeting beauty, however, we may notice a slightly drooping one at right that appears to be casting a shadow upon the wall. Mira’s colors for the table and wall aren’t strictly naturalistic; they’re chosen to coordinate with the tones of his June roses. About the Artist: Born in Italy, Mira immigrated to the US in 1904. He attended the Art Students League, the Beaux Arts School, and the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Ivan Olinsky; his works were exhibited at several Corcoran Museum biennials. As a young man of twenty-two, Mira and a fellow artist named Joseph Perna planned to hitchhike across the United States, painting pictures as they went. They paused in Gettysburg, PA, to paint several battlefield landscapes (Gettysburg Times 10 June 1922: 2), and then Mira was invited by one driver to paint a portrait of his parents in Detroit. “After a few months,” Mira recollected, “I became so absorbed in my work that I had completely forgotten about California. By this time my companion had become homesick and he induced me to return with him.” Returning to New York, Mira was best known for his cityscapes of lower Manhattan and capturing “the way busy people see it...None of those breath-taking shots cameramen contrive of towers and infinity, which no New Yorker sees in actuality” (Los Angeles Times 31 Jan. 1943: 35). 18 more images at The Athenaeum. 2 more images at FAP.
This striking landscape is organized around the single arc of a highway that divides the space into two sectors: above, a brightly lit realm of forests and mountain ridges; below, a shadowed landscape of brown fields, a diseased tree, and a dilapidated farm house. Clearly, the travails of American farmers during the 1930s has influenced Mira’s subject matter. The highway itself is a pristine band of white futurity, guarded on one side by rails and on the other by electric or phone lines (which the farm conspicuously lacks). Improbably, we see three cars on the road along with two people walking alongside; what may be a farmer watches them walk away. About the Artist: Born in Italy, Mira immigrated to the US in 1904. He attended the Art Students League, the Beaux Arts School, and the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Ivan Olinsky; his works were exhibited at several Corcoran Museum biennials. As a young man of twenty-two, Mira and a fellow artist named Joseph Perna planned to hitchhike across the United States, painting pictures as they went. They paused in Gettysburg, PA, to paint several battlefield landscapes (Gettysburg Times 10 June 1922: 2), and then Mira was invited by one driver to paint a portrait of his parents in Detroit. “After a few months,” Mira recollected, “I became so absorbed in my work that I had completely forgotten about California. By this time my companion had become homesick and he induced me to return with him.” Returning to New York, Mira was best known for his cityscapes of lower Manhattan and capturing “the way busy people see it...None of those breath-taking shots cameramen contrive of towers and infinity, which no New Yorker sees in actuality” (Los Angeles Times 31 Jan. 1943: 35). 18 more images at The Athenaeum. 2 more images at FAP.