Emil Bisttram Sites

"Justice Tempered with Mercy (Uphold the Right, Prevent the Wrong)" by Emil Bisttram was originally installed in the courthouse at Roswell, NM. It was painted with Treasury Relief Art Project funds in 1936 and moved to its present location in 1983. "Cooperation" and "Strife" are two smaller (3' x 3') murals that flank "Justice Tempered With Mercy" to form a triptych.  

The New Deal is responsible for a magnificent array of artworks that embellish the Department of Justice building. The Treasury Section of Fine Arts commissioned artists to create 68 murals between 1936 and 1941 for $68,000, or one percent of the building cost.  The building's murals depict scenes of daily life from American history and allegories on the role of justice in American society. Emil Bisttram painted an oil on canvas mural, "Contemporary Justice and Woman" (1939). "This intricate oil-on-canvas mural shows a figure of Justice cutting the chains of tradition, which is represented by an old crouching shrew that had bound women....

"The Crossroads Town" was painted by Emil Bisttram, a Hungarian-born New Mexico artist who served as the New Mexico supervisor of the first federal art project (PWAP) (Flynn, 2012). "Even the most peaceful scene--the townscape in the Ranger, Texas, Post Office, from 1939--has a story to tell. The artist found Ranger a virtual ghost town but gave hope to the former boomtown with a picture of the clean, prosperous place it could once again become. Hope on the wall, for a mere $880 (the artist's unprincely fee!)" (Marling, 2004).

"When the new courthouse was completed in January 1934, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) commissioned four of Taos’ premier artists to paint ten murals in the facility as part of the New Deal, to alleviate some of the crunching poverty resulting from the Depression... Emil Bisttram, Ward Lockwood, Bert Phillips, and Victor Higgins...would become known as the 'Taos Fresco Quartet.' The original intent of the project was to have 13 panels of murals - 11 narrow vertical ones, a round medallion over the entrance, and Higgins’ large central Ten Commandments piece. The ten completed murals were...