- City:
- Los Angeles, CA
- Site Type:
- Mosaics, Art Works
- New Deal Agencies:
- Federal Arts Project (FAP), Arts Programs
- Completed:
- 1937
- Artist:
- Stanton Macdonald-Wright
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- Unknown
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Stanton Macdonald-Wright designed the mosaic “Early (Spanish) California” for Edison Middle School in Los Angeles, CA, in 1937. It was funded by the WPA Federal Art Project (FAP) and hangs in the school auditorium’s foyer. Albert King likely executed the tile work.
The mosaic depicts vaqueros wrangling cows, miners panning
for gold, and workers building a railroad. A “Californio” couple
stands in the center of the image. Tiles of different shapes give the mosaic a variety of textures.
Macdonald-Wright was supervisor for the Southern California division of the FAP from 1935 to 1943. He is considered “an important proponent of the nonrepresentational styles of art on the New Deal projects” (Kalfatovic, p. 370).
Macdonald-Wright’s other New Deal–funded works in the region include murals at the Public Library and City Hall in Santa Monica, as well as mosaics at Hooper Avenue School in Los Angeles and at the Community Center in South Gate.
Source notes
Marilyn Wyman, A New Deal for Art in Southern California: Murals and Sculpture under Government Patronage. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, 1982.
Steven Gelber, "Working to prosperity: New Deal murals in California," California History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer, 1979), pp. 98-127.
Kalfatovic, Martin R. The New Deal Fine Arts Projects: A Bibliography, 1933-1992. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1994.
Site originally submitted by Richard A Walker on October 12, 2014.
Additional contributions by Natalie McDonald.
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