In the 1930’s America experienced what is now known as the Great Depression. There were over four hundred thousand American people out of work. Many relief programs were initiated to provide work for the unemployed. It was President Herbert Hoover who asked the Senate to approve money to provide immediate unemployment relief through work on the highways, waterways, and public buildings.
The United States government’s first investment in cultural development was marked by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Cultural program. The New Deal programs were influenced by the ideas created by the Mexican Muralist Movement. The Federal Arts Program was first suggested to FDR by George Biddle, who studied painting with Diego Riviera and was impressed by the Mexican mural movement . He suggested in a letter to FDR that a group of muralists work on the new Justice Department Building in Washington D.C. Biddle’s suggestion helped to develop the Public Works of Art Project. The PWAP was part of the Civil Work Administration. The CWA was an experimental federal work relief program. The PWAP employed artists to create murals on public buildings such as schools orphanages, libraries and post offices. The PWAP ended in April of 1934 along with the CWA.
There were over 5,000 artists involved throughout the nation in the W.P.A. Artists were paid between twenty-three to thirty -five dollars a week for their work. Many of the artists such as Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollack went on to achieve world-wide recognition.
In New Haven, Connecticut, the Federal Art Program was headed by Theodore Sizer, the associate director for the Yale Art Gallery. Without pay he managed the direction of the program while still carrying on his work at Yale. The Federal Art Project, is a collective term for a series of programs under various New Deal Agencies. In Connecticut, the Federal Art Project employed dozens of artists and produced hundreds of works of art. There were 16,000 square feet of murals painted in Connecticut. Most of the murals had regional or historical themes and were painted in the style of 1930’s realism. Federal funds paid for most of the labor and materials. Local government or civic groups were required to contribute to the effort. The Board of Education was the most active sponsor in New Haven. (17)
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Endnotes
1. Mike Venzia, Diego Rivera .(Chicago: Childrens Press,1994) 14.
2. Bertram D. Wolfe, Diego Rivera His Life and Times.( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939) 36.
3. Wolfe,50.
4. Ernestine Evans, The Frescoes of Diego Rivera. ( New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1929) 23.
5. Venzia,18.
6. Wolfe, 98.
7. Katherine Anne Porter, The Arts ( January,1925) 21-23.
8. Instituto Nacional De Bellas Artes and the The Cleveland Museum of Art, Diego Rivera Art and Revolution .( Landucci Editors: Mexico City,1999) 147.
9. Instituto Nacional De Bellas Artes and the The Cleveland Museum of Art, 149.
10. Wolfe,314.
11. Wolfe, 314.
12. As cited in Wolfe, 314. New York Times (December 14,1931)
13. Wolfe,317.
14. Wolfe,361.
15. Wolfe,363. Wolfe describes this account from his own position as Rivera’s friend.
16. Wolfe,363. A personal account told to Wolfe.
17. Annabelle, Simon Cahn, Journal of the Colony of the New Haven Historical Society. ( New Haven: Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society) 4-5.