Mitchell Siporin (1910–1976) was a
Social Realist
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
American painter.
Biography
Mitchell Siporin was born on May 5, 1910 in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
to Hyman, a truck driver, and Jennie Siporin, both immigrants from
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, and grew up in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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.
[Abram Leon Sachar, ''Brandeis University: A Host at Last'', ]Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, ...
: Brandeis University Press, 1995, p. 15
/ref> Siporin attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...
. He did illustrations for '' Esquire'' and other magazines. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Siporin worked as a painter for the Illinois Art Project through the Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
. Together with Edward Millman, he painted "the largest single mural project awarded for a post office by the Section of Fine Arts
The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture was a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.
Commonly known as the Section, it was rena ...
" in the Central Post Office in St Louis, Missouri.
In late 1943 he was deployed as a sergeant in the Army Artist Unit, where he served alongside Rudolph von Ripper
Rudolph Charles von Ripper (January 29, 1905 – July 9, 1960) (born Rudolph Carl von Ripper, sometimes Rudolph RipperAfter the abolition of the Austrian nobility in 1919, Austrian nobles were no longer entitled to use 'von' in their names. How ...
. He sent back drawings and watercolours from North Africa and Italy.
He married Miriam Tane in Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
to November 9, 1945. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945 and 1947. In 1949, he won the Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...
in painting.
In 1951, he founded the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, ...
.[Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, ''Painting in Boston, 1950-2000'', Amherst, Massachusetts: ]University of Massachusetts Press
The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts a ...
, 2002, p. 20
/ref> In 1956, he became the first curator of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University Art Collection.
Siporin died in 1976 in Newton, Massachusetts. He was Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
.
Works
Siporin's work is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation and expansion project comple ...
, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, the National Gallery of Art, the , the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
, and Albert G. Lane Technical High School in Chicago.
In 1947 his painting ''End of an Era'' won the Logan Medal of the Arts
The Logan Medal of the Arts was an arts prize initiated in 1907 and associated with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Frank G Logan family and the Society for Sanity in Art. From 1917 through 1940, 270 awards were given for contributions to Ame ...
at the 51st Annual Exhibition in Chicago.
See also
* Boston Expressionism Boston Expressionism is an arts movement marked by emotional directness, dark humor, social and spiritual themes, and a tendency toward figuration strong enough that Boston Figurative Expressionism is sometimes used as an alternate term to distingu ...
References
External links
*
Mitchell Siporin art at "''Comrades In Art''" online show
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siporin, Mitchell
1910 births
1976 deaths
Artists from Chicago
20th-century American painters
American male painters
20th-century American Jews
Section of Painting and Sculpture artists
Brandeis University faculty
American muralists
Painters from New York City
Painters from Illinois
Federal Art Project artists