47 Facts About Margaret Lefranc

Margaret Lefranc was an American painter, illustrator and editor, an American Modernist with early training as a color expressionist.

Margaret Lefranc's media included oil, watercolor, gouache, pastel, drawing, etching and monotypes.

Margaret Lefranc was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham Frankel and Sophie Tiplitz Frankel, immigrants from Moscow and Tbilisi, respectively.

Margaret Lefranc was often in poor health which made it difficult for her to attend school regularly.

Margaret Lefranc was the youngest child and at the age of six, she decided to become an artist.

Margaret Lefranc spent a lot of time alone when she wasn't in the hands of a caregiver.

In New York City, Margaret Lefranc attended Adelphi Academy and Hunter College Model School.

Margaret Lefranc finished the last few months in school, and at the age of thirteen, traveled by freighter to join her parents in Berlin where she contracted rheumatic fever.

Margaret Lefranc spent almost a year in bed, did not speak German until six months later, and, at that time, was not exposed to the widespread hardship in the city.

Abe built her a small studio on the roof of their apartment building where Margaret Lefranc drew in charcoals under the tutelage of a young art student who eventually told her parents to leave her alone and let her develop on her own.

Margaret Lefranc was aware that the money from the sketch would allow the woman to buy some food.

When Margaret Lefranc was well, she took classes in charcoal drawing and charcoal portraits at "Kunstschule des Westens", the School of the West.

Margaret Lefranc saw the works of Marc, Kollwitz, Lehmbruck, Heckel and other artists of Die Brucke, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

Margaret Lefranc loved the great old masters, but it was the modernists, particularly Lovis Corinth, who stimulated her profoundly.

Margaret Lefranc practiced the use of light and shadow in the development, on a two-dimensional surface, of forms in a three dimensional space.

Margaret Lefranc studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, the Russian Academy, "Academy Russe in Paris".

Margaret Lefranc's teachers included Basil Tchoukaieff, Antoine Bourdelle and Charles Bissiere.

Margaret Lefranc returned to New York in 1932, and seven years later exhibited in the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing, New York.

Margaret Lefranc immediately set up the Hunter Colony and invited her young friends she had met when teaching art at Camp Allegro: Felice Swados and her future husband, Richard Hofstadter, and their friends, all who paid a stipend and spent summers working on projects whether painting, music, a thesis, or a book.

Margaret Lefranc painted portraits including her own, the apple orchard and other landscapes.

When he was starving, Margaret Lefranc fed him at Luchow's Restaurant.

Margaret Lefranc released him from his contract when Julien Levy promised Gorky an income of twenty-five dollars a month, which she couldn't match, plus exhibitions.

Margaret Lefranc represented the sculptor Chaim Gross, Saul Baiserman, Theodore Roszak, Ary Stillman, Jean Liberte, Lloyd Raymond Ney, Donald Forbes, Philip Reisman, Max Weber, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and many others.

In 1980, Margaret Lefranc was asked to contribute her papers of the Guild Art Gallery to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian.

In 1939 Margaret Lefranc took a trip with her friend, the photographer Annette Stevens Rada to Florida, then travelled on to Texas and north to Las Vegas and finally to Taos, New Mexico to visit her friends, Dr Rudolph and Majorie Kieve.

Margaret Lefranc wrote about Frieda Lawrence, Auden and Kallman, Witter Bynner and others in an article published in 1992 and later serialized.

Mixed in with the vacation to Taos, Margaret Lefranc assisted in her family's real estate investments, worked as a textile designer and stylist ; and served on the staff of the Cooper Union Museum.

Margaret Lefranc met and lived with Raymond Elton Schoonover, a book store owner of Dutch descent, for a year.

At Cooper Union, Lefranc, now known as Margaret Schoonover, had been hired as a curator, but that never came to fruition.

Margaret Lefranc did arrange exhibitions for the art students upstairs.

Margaret Lefranc donated several of her own works of art to the museum.

Margaret Lefranc had already met D'Hornoncourt when guesting on his Art in America radio program.

Margaret Lefranc joined the group soon afterwards when Dr Rudy Kieve wrote a letter of introduction for Marriott to present to Margaret Lefranc when Marriott was in New York.

The war was over, so Margaret Lefranc decided to give it a trial for six months, team up with Marriott and paint as much as she could in the Southwest.

Margaret Lefranc arrived in Santa Fe in her old 1935 Dodge to disruptive events.

In Nambe, Margaret Lefranc saw the spectacular distant sierras which she painted regularly along with other scenery.

Margaret Lefranc completed Indian illustrations of pottery in the round, portraits of Maria Martinez and her home life, illustrated and painted in oils Indian dances at the Pueblos as well as her Spanish neighbors and their environs.

Margaret Lefranc illustrated Alma Big Tree, a Kiowa Medicine Woman and traveled to Southern Cheyenne Reservation to paint an elder, Mary Inkanish, who was an expert on beadwork, which gouache was used as a frontispiece for one of Marriott's book.

Margaret Lefranc collected pottery, assisted Marriott in establishing small historical museums set up in store fronts, and traveled for research and artifact gathering.

In 1945 Margaret Lefranc bought property in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Margaret Lefranc eventually sold the Nambe house, and they went their separate ways, for which Marriott later expressed deep regret.

Margaret Lefranc rented her house in Santa Fe until 1969 and moved to Florida to care for her ailing parents.

In 1956 Margaret Lefranc donated ninety-two pieces of pottery to what is the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, University of Oklahoma.

Margaret Lefranc assumed the management of their real estate, invested in the stock market and eventually bought the second oldest house in Coconut Grove which she restored.

Margaret Lefranc successfully sold her art, and exhibited at various museums throughout the United States while taking classes at the University of Miami to see what the "youngsters" were doing.

Until 1997 Margaret Lefranc continued to visit Santa Fe to make repairs on her home, to visit her adopted Indian family at the Nambe Pueblo, and to paint.

Margaret Lefranc traveled to the Hunter home in the Catskills which she still owned all and continued taking care of her parents and their interests.