Print of the Day!! Sunday, September 3, 2017. American printmaker Anne Michalov (1904-2001)

The Print of the Day!! Sunday, September 3, 2017 is by American printmaker Anne Michalov (1904-2001).

Sunday's print from our inventory is a lithograph, published in the Federal Art Project (FAP) by the Works Project Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression here in the US. I will follow this post with a short history on the WPA/FAP print divisions for any who want to investigate it further.  

Tenant Farm is a lithograph, done around 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. The image measures 9-1/4 x 13" and is pencil signed, titled and editioned "13-25" by the artist in the lower margin. It was printed by the artist at the Chicago WPA on a wove, antique-white 'Navarre' watermarked paper. A reference for this image is an impression at the Art Institute of Chicago, allocation FA10168.

This lithograph can be purchased from the gallery for $425.00.

Tenant Farm is one of 11 lithographs Anne Michalov did for the Chicago WPA, this impression has been stamped on the verso in black ink: "Federal Arts Project Studios / Works Progress Administration / 433 E. Erie Chicago, Illinois."

Tenant Farm depicts a small rural farm in the midst of the Great Depression, the farmers allowed to live in the house and work a small garden for their own use, the profits from the crops all went to the owner of the farm.  

Tenant farming could be done as partnerships, with contracts or indenture where the farmer works for a specific time, others were by whim and the tenant could be evicted for any reason. Tenant farming was especially prevalent in the southern part of the country.

For more information about this print, to find a biography or other images by Anne Michalov go to our website: 

https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/detail/20652/Anne-Michalov/Tenant-Farm-WPA

Here is a link to our full inventory on our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q=

A brief history of WPA/FAP prints:

Painter/printmaker George Biddle is credited with convincing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his old college roommate, to create a "New Deal" program for the Arts. Several programs resulted including the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP), the Treasury Section of Fine Arts (The Section), the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) and the best known, broad-based WPA-FAP (Works Project Administration / Federal Art Project), which, at its peak, employed five thousand artists.

The WPA-FAP was broken into various divisions within each state and included Mural Painting, Easel Painting, Graphic Arts, Sculpture and Education. The works created in these divisions were created for or utilized by public facilities such as government buildings, post offices, schools, hospitals, military bases, etc. The mandate of the WPA-FAP was employment, not the "higher" purpose of creating a great work of art. The early political climate of the PWAP demanded a distinct "American" style, free of other influences. This policy of course was reluctantly accepted and constantly challenged, leading to much controversy and many policy changes.

Under the director Holger Cahill the Graphic Arts division of the FAP had much more freedom than did the other divisions. For many artists this was the first time they did not need to concern themselves with critical or financial success. Many were able to explore and experiment with the various printmaking media, despite bureaucratic limitations, particularly in the areas of color printmaking. In New York Russell Limbach consulted for lithography and Louis Schanker for color woodcut.

It was in the WPA-FAP that screen-printing became accepted as a Fine Art medium. The inexpensive equipment that was required enabled many more artists to directly participate rather than needing the large presses and skill that were required to print intaglios and lithographs which only one person could use at a time. Anthony Velonis, among others, had worked as a commercial silkscreener and taught the craft to interested artists. In Philadelphia African-American printmaker Dox Thrash and co-workers developed the carborundum print and in California WPA printer Ray Bertrand developed a new transfer paper for lithography which enabled artists from around the state to send their drawings by mail to Bertrand. He would transfer them to a litho plate and prove them.

Stylistically the WPA-FAP graphic artists tended to fall into two camps, Realists and Modernists with the Realists being by far the predominant group, working for the bureaucracy in the "American" style that was easily understood and expected. The Realists were further divided into two groups, the "American Scene" which was generally rural in nature and tended to glorify the American worker and the landscape with an apolitical and optimistic view. In contrast the "Social Realism" was urban and political in nature, often depicting the poverty, crime, graft and exploitation so common in the cities during the Depression.

The Modernists were in the minority and also fell into camps regarding degrees of abstraction and other experimental imagery. What they had in common was an unwillingness to shrug off the influences of Europe such as Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism.

Indeed many of the artists working in the urban environs had been active artists in Europe, coming to America in the late 1920s and early 30s to escape the Depression there. The project offered opportunities to a diverse group of artists that also included immigrants from Russia, China, Japan and other countries. In the WPA-FAP they were put together with both young and experienced American artists that included women, Hispanic and African-Americans. and a dialog began that would change American printmaking forever.

Though some two hundred thousand prints were produced from some eleven thousand original matrices much of this work has disappeared. Although they were supposed to have been given to American museums and libraries many of these prints were destroyed when the U.S. entered World War II and they were pulped for the war effort, sometimes tossed away by zealous curators who did not want to be reminded of the Depression. Others could not afford the space to house and the staff to catalogue them. Many were lost to general indifference. Since the prints were not meant to be sold, they were generally not found in private collections. The small editions (usually 25 or fewer) have made them scarce.