Lane Tech College Prep High School Auditorium Mural – Chicago IL

Description

Among the many Federal Art Project (FAP) funded artworks at Lane Tech High school is a four-panel fresco in the auditorium, “Teaching of the Arts,” painted by Mitchell Siporin in 1938. Each panel is 15′ x 3’6.”

From A Guide to Chicago’s Murals (2001):

“Four vertical panels mounted between the exterior doors of the Lane Tech auditorium describe the teaching of the humanities. They were painted when the school was all male. In each, Mitchell Siporin portrays the figure of a mentor or teacher standing behind that of a young student. For literature, a wise-looking older man with his arm outstretched gently leads a young man with book in hand. Art is suggested by a student holding a palette and painting a still life at his easel. His teacher stands behind him with his arm on the young man’s shoulder. A young man performing on his violin accompanied by a shadowy figure at the piano personifies music. In the fourth panel, a boy in Elizabethan costume is embraced by a figure in classical robes representing drama. In acknowledging the influence of the Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros on his work, Siporin said, ‘Through the lessons of our Mexican teachers, we have been made more aware of the scope and fullness of this the soul of our own environment.’ It was they, he said, who suggested ‘the application of modernism toward a socially moving epic of our time and place.'”