Post Office Mural – Dexter MO

Description

The post office contains a 1941 Treasury Section of Fine Arts mural by Joe Jones entitled “Husking Corn.”

This is an excellent mural showing farmers harvesting and husking corn.  The dominant feature is the men working with lots of movement and wearing work clothes.  The corn is important, but could be any commodity.  He is celebrating the workers, very much in keeping with his strong political beliefs.

Joe Jones was largely self-taught and won an award in 1931 which enabled him to travel to the artists colony in Provincetown, MA.  He was highly political and after becoming communist, was shunned by many of his patrons.  He joined the Public Works of Art Project early in 1934.  He moved to New York to pursue his career and was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to depict the dust bowl.  His most famous work in the Whitney is from that period.  His later work was minimal and nonrepresentational and was not as well received as his early work.   He was a teacher at the Ste. Genevieve artists colony.