1. Marion Kathryn Greenwood was an American social realist artist who became popular starting in the 1920s and became renowned in both the United States and Mexico.
26 Facts About Marion Greenwood
1. 2.
Marion Greenwood is most well known for her murals, but she practiced easel painting, printmaking, and frescoes.
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Marion Greenwood traveled to Mexico, Hong Kong, Burma, and India, depicting peoples of different cultures and ethnicities and paying special attention to oppressed people in underdeveloped locations, which has at times resulted in critical reception in the modern-era due to issues of ethnic and racial stereotypes.
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Marion Greenwood was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1909, to Walter Greenwood and Kathryn Boyland.
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Marion Greenwood was the second daughter and last of six children.
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Marion Greenwood's father was a painter and her older sister, Grace Greenwood Ames, was an artist.
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Marion Greenwood exhibited artistic talent at a very young age and left high school at the age of fifteen to study with a scholarship at the Art Students League of New York.
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Marion Greenwood studied lithography with Emil Ganso and mosaic with Alexander Archipenko.
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In 1929, both of the Marion Greenwood sisters participated in the famed Bohemian event, the Maverick Festival at the Maverick Art Colony in Woodstock, New York.
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Still in her teens, Marion Greenwood used the proceeds from a portrait of a wealthy financier to begin her travels through Europe.
11.
Marion Greenwood returned to New York in 1930, but continued to travel extensively over the next four decades, mostly throughout the United States, Mexico, and China.
12.
An example of her process is evident in the preparation for the decoration at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo in Morelia, Marion Greenwood spent a year studying and immersing herself in the Purepecha Indians culture before completing this project.
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Marion Greenwood was the first woman to receive a mural commission from a foreign government.
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Marion Greenwood's murals were often large dramatic scenes with groups of people engaged in cultural practices or in the case of a social works project, workers in their environment.
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Around 1940, Marion Greenwood began to focus on easel painting and printmaking, generally depicting powerful, gritty scenes of working classes or insightful portraits.
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Marion Greenwood was applauded by critics for "her profound sympathy with the poor and the oppressed of all lands, her natural democratic feeling" and "her disregard of difficulties and class barriers".
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Marion Greenwood was seen as an advocate for these struggling figures in the same way that she supported social movements with her social realist murals.
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At the start of World War II, Marion Greenwood was one of only two women appointed as an artist war-correspondent with the World War II United States Army Art Program.
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Marion Greenwood's travels included a four-day trip to Guangzhou, China and a weekend trip to Macau.
20.
Marion Greenwood returned to New York City by herself in June 1947.
21.
In 1954, Marion Greenwood received a large commission for a 6-by-29-foot oil-on-linen mural, "The History of Tennessee" nicknamed "The Singing Mural", in the University Center student center auditorium at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
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Marion Greenwood taught art courses at the university while she worked as an artist-in-residence on the mural, which took a year to complete.
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Marion Greenwood was exhibited in numerous solo shows at the American Contemporary Artists Gallery in New York City.
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Marion Greenwood exhibited her work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York World's Fair.
25.
Marion Greenwood died on August 20,1970, in Kingston, New York after a long illness and a cerebral hemorrhage.
26.
Marion Greenwood's work is in the private collections of Maurice Wertheim, Joseph Hirschorn, and Marc Sandler.