Steve Mumford (born 1960) is an American painter. His practice has recently included the depiction of scenes from American wars in

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

and

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. Typically he works in large, realist oil paintings, as well as

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

on paper. He is the son of mathematician

David Mumford David Bryant Mumford (born 11 June 1937) is an American mathematician known for his work in algebraic geometry and then for research into vision and pattern theory. He won the Fields Medal and was a MacArthur Fellow. In 2010 he was awarded t ...

Education

Mumford received his M.F.A. in 1994 at

the School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

, New York. There, he met

Inka Essenhigh Inka Essenhigh (born 1969) is an American painter based in New York City. Throughout her career, Essenhigh has had solo exhibitions at galleries such as Deitch Projects, Mary Boone Gallery, 303 Gallery, Stefan Stux Gallery, and Jacob Lewis Galler ...

, whom he would later marry, as well as artists Michelle Lopez and Michael Lazarus.

Career

Mumford entered Iraq on April 9, 2003, the day the statue of

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

was toppled in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

, and he has periodically returned to the region to document the daily lives of both Iraqi citizens and American soldiers. These works were published, along with journalistic text by Mumford, in a book released through

Drawn & Quarterly Drawn & Quarterly is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic content, ...

. Steve made drawing trips to Iraq and Afghanistan during the war in 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011. He was sometimes embedded, sometimes independent, always attempting to draw from life. Besides war, events he has drawn for Harpers include the BP oil spill, rallies for Donald Trump, POWs at Guantanamo, soldiers recovering at Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center, and most recently, Covid scenes from NYC as well as looting and BLM protests in NYC and Portland, OR. He often makes oil paintings based on the subjects he’s drawn. In April 2007, a major exhibition of his war works was held at the

Pritzker Military Library The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its spe ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

.Justin Jones
"Steve Mumford: The Artist Who Went to War"
The Daily Beast, February 28, 2014. Mumford is represented by

Postmasters Gallery Postmasters is a contemporary art gallery located in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, owned and directed by Magda Sawon and Tamas Banovich. The Postmasters gallery opened in the East Village in December 1984, moved to SoHo in 1989, and was rel ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. In 2013, Mumford made paintings of the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

. His work was exhibited “Steve Mumford’s War Journals” at the

Frist Center for the Visual Arts The Frist Art Museum, formerly known as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, is an art exhibition hall in Nashville, Tennessee, housed in the city's historic U.S. Post Office building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. ...

in Nashville, Tennessee through June 8, 2014. Mumford's painting "Dying Soldier" was in the exhibition "Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011" through March 1, 2020 at

PS 1 PS1, Ps 1, PS-1, PS/1 or PS One may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' Ponniyin Selvan: I'', an Indian Tamil language period action drama film Technology * "$PS1", "Prompt String 1" the environment variable in a command-line interface which s ...

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

, New York.

Personal life and family

Mumford lives in New York City and is married to artist

Bibliography

* Mumford, Steve. ''Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq''. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly Books, 2005.

References

External links

* 1960 births Living people 20th-century American painters 21st-century American painters American male painters American war artists Harper's Magazine people 20th-century American male artists {{US-painter-stub