Mexican Bric-a-Brac

WinogradHelen - Mexican Bric-a-Brac.jpg

Dublin Core

Title

Description

The range of bric-a-brac depicted here is quite broad: a blue glass bottle, a painted ceramic plate, a napkin and cloth, a pair of blue shoes, a flower, a magazine, and what appears to be an avocado. Attempting to chart an underlying symbolism, in the manner of traditional still lifes, is perhaps less important than its Mexican location. Assembled with seeming informality, each object has an American counterpart that would be less unfamiliar.

About the Artist: Born in New York City, Winograd’s parents Sigmund and Sadie Winograd both were immigrants—from Poland and Russia, respectively. Their daughter seems to have been born an artist. She was first recognized at the age of 10, winning a gold medal in the Wanamaker competition for an oil painting of a New York City street scene. Winograd attended the Art Students League of New York, where were she was taught by George Bridgman and Guy Pène du Bois. She pursued further education at the National Academy of Design and City College of New York after graduation, becoming an art teacher in the New York City Public Schools. During the 1930s Winograd worked in the WPA Easel divsion and, throughout World War II, in the USO’s Hospital Sketching Program: she drew portraits of wounded soldiers recovering in military hospitals. In 1951 Winograd married physicist Felix E. Geigner, who had worked on the Manhattan Project and would go on to research for NASA's Mercury and Apollo projects. Winograd later earned her BFA and MFA from the George Washington University. According to her family she spent the last 25 years of her life “chang[ing] the paradigm of aging” by challanging the stereotype of the elderly’s inablity to be active in different forms. Winograd died peacefully in her sleep at the age of one hundred.

Source Consulted: “Helen Winograd Geiger,” Ancestry.com. U.S. Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011.

Creator

Winograd, Helen, 1910-2010

Publisher

Date

Contributor

Source

Format

Type

Identifier

Still Image Item Type Metadata

Original Format

Oil painting

Physical Dimensions

16 x 20 in.
Condition: surface dirt

Geolocation