The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a New Deal work-relief program that employed professional artists to create sculptures, paintings, crafts and design for public buildings and parks during the Great Depression in the United States. The program operated from December 8, 1933, to May 20, 1934, administered by Edward Bruce under the United States Treasury Department, with funding from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
Stevan Dohanos was an American artist and illustrator of the social realism school, best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers, and responsible for several of the Don't Talk set of World War II propaganda posters. He named Grant Wood and Edward Hopper as the greatest influences on his painting.
Anton Refregier was a painter and muralist active in Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project commissions, and in teaching art. He was a Russian immigrant to the United States.
Edward Bright Bruce was the administrator of the New Deal art projects of the United States Department of the Treasury: the Public Works of Art Project (1933–1934), the Section of Painting and Sculpture (1934–1943), and the Treasury Relief Art Project (1935–1938). Ned Bruce was a successful lawyer and entrepreneur before giving up his business career altogether at the age of 43 to become an artist. However, like most artists during the Depression, he found it impossible to make a living making art, and he grudgingly returned to business as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. In 1932 he joined the Treasury Department, where his expertise in monetary policy and art guided federal efforts to employ workers in the visual arts during the Great Depression in the United States.
The Wall Street crash of 1929 left many artists in the United States unemployed. Collectors who normally could afford to purchase such luxury items no longer had the means to do so. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program created funding for art projects which would inspire confidence in American life and history. The program's objective was to hire artists to create works of art for display in public buildings throughout the country. From 1934 to 1943, there were various federally funded programs for artists in New Mexico – the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the Works Progress Administration (WPA)/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP), and the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP).
United States post office murals are notable examples of New Deal art produced during the years 1934–1943.
Lucile Esma Lundquist Blanch was an American artist, art educator, and Guggenheim Fellow. She was noted for the murals she created for the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts during the Great Depression.
Gustaf Dalstrom (1893–1971) was an American artist and muralist. From 1927, he served as president of the Chicago Society of Artists. During the Great Depression he contributed several mural paintings to public schools and post offices through the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture. One of his murals that can still be viewed today is The Great Indian Council - 1833. The mural was originally featured in 1938, paired with a mural his wife, Frances Foy, created in The Old Main Post Office of Chicago. The Great Indian Council - 1833 can be viewed in the current location of the South Loop Post Office in Chicago, Illinois.
Frances Foy was an American painter, muralist, illustrator, and etcher born in Chicago, Illinois.
Miriam McKinnie also known as Miriam McKinnie Hofmeier, was an American artist.
Richard Haines was an American New Deal muralist.
Rainey Bennett was an American artist, illustrator and muralist. His works have been displayed in major museum art collections.
The Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) was a New Deal arts program that commissioned visual artists to provide artistic decoration for existing Federal buildings during the Great Depression in the United States. A project of the United States Department of the Treasury, TRAP was administered by the Section of Painting and Sculpture and funded by the Works Progress Administration, which provided assistants employed through the Federal Art Project. The Treasury Relief Art Project also created murals and sculpture for Public Works Administration housing projects. TRAP was established July 21, 1935, and continued through June 30, 1938.
Tracy Montminy, who completed early works as Elizabeth Tracy, (1911–1992) was an American artist and muralist. During the WPA's era, she painted murals in civic buildings, including murals in the library in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the fire and police building of Saugus, Massachusetts; the Milton, Massachusetts, post office; Medford, Massachusetts City Hall; the post office of Downers Grove, Illinois; and the post office in Kennebunkport, Maine, as well as others both in the U.S. and abroad. She was an art instructor at the University of Missouri and the American University of Beirut, continuing her own painting projects simultaneously with her teaching into the 1980s. Upon her death, she established a trust to create the Montminy Art Gallery in Columbia, Missouri.
Grant Wright Christian was an American artist. He graduated from the John Herron Art Institute in 1933 and later attended the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts from which he received the Thouron Prize.
Edward Arcenio Chavez (1917–1995) was an American artist. His work straddled realism, expressionism, and abstraction; often incorporating both elements of modernism and his heritage as a New Mexican Hispanic and Native American artist. He was an artist with the Treasury Relief Art Project during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He also worked for the Section of Painting and Sculpture, painting a mural in the post office in Geneva, Nebraska, in 1941. His painting Colt can be found at the Museum of Modern Art. His work is also included in the collection at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum.
Jenne Magafan (1916-1952) was an American painter and muralist. During her short-lived career, she became a successful mural painter in the 1930s and early 1940s. She gained national prominence for her work in the New Deal art program. Her twin sister Ethel Magafan was also a muralist.
New Deal artwork is an umbrella term used to describe the creative output organized and funded by the Roosevelt administration's New Deal response to the Great Depression. This work produced between 1933 and 1942 ranges in content and form from Dorothea Lange's photographs for the Farm Security Administration to the Coit Tower murals to the library-etiquette posters from the Federal Art Project to the architecture of the Solomon Courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee. The New Deal sought to "democratize the arts" and is credited with creating a "great body of distinguished work and fostering a national aesthetic."
