Seymour Fogel was an American artist whose artistic output included social realist art early in the century, abstract art and expressionist art at mid-century, and transcendental art late in the century. His drive to experiment led him to work with expected media – oil paints, watercolors, and acrylics – as well as unconventional media such as glass, plastics, sand, and wax.
Seymour Fogel in 1937
Fogel's home "Southwind" in Austin, Texas
Fogel in 1939, reading a newspaper on his scaffolding while painting a mural
"The Wealth of the Nation," 1938 mural, titled after Scottish economist Adam Smith's 1776 treatise The Wealth of Nations
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was created not as a cultural activity, but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The WPA Federal Art Project established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country, researched and documented American design, commissioned a significant body of public art without restriction to content or subject matter, and sustained some 10,000 artists and craft workers during the Great Depression. According to American Heritage, “Something like 400,000 easel paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings were produced by WPA artists during the eight years of the project’s existence, virtually free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.”
Eagle and palette design regarded as the logo of the Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project
Poster summarizing Federal Art Project employment and activities (November 1, 1936)
The Workers (c. 1935), a wall hanging created by Florence Kawa for the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, was presented to Eleanor Roosevelt