Ethel Magafan

Ethel Magafan (August 10, 1916 – April 24, 1993) was an American painter and muralist.

Early life

Magafan was born in Chicago to Greek parents who had recently immigrated to the U.S. The family soon relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Magafan's artistic training occurred at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center under the tutelage of Peppino Mangravite, Boardman Robinson and Frank Mechau, who hired Magafan and her identical twin sister, Jenne Magafan, to assist on mural projects. In 1937, Ethel won the commission to paint a mural in the U.S. post office in Auburn, Nebraska, making her the youngest recipient of such a commission. It would be the first of seven government-sponsored commissions for the artist.

Murals

Under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, several programs were created to employ Americans during the Great Depression. The Magafan twins worked under the New Deal's Section of Painting and Sculpture, a program that hired thousands of artists to paint murals in public spaces, particularly post offices. Ethel and her twin sister, Jenne Magafan, became widely known for their murals painted during the Great Depression. Ethel received her first of seven Government commissions when she was commissioned to produce a painting for the United States post office in Auburn, Nebraska, titled ''Threshing''.Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, ''Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. Other murals commissioned by the US Government hang in the United States Senate Chamber, the Social Security Building and the Recorder Deeds Building in Washington, D.C., and in post offices in Wynne, Arkansas, titled ''Cotton Pickers'' in 1940; in Madill, Oklahoma, titled ''Prairie Fire'' in 1941; and Englewood, Colorado, titled ''The Horse Corral'' in 1942. Her final mural, entitled ''Grant in the Wilderness'', was installed in 1979 in the Chancellorsville Visitor Center at the Fredericksburg National Memorial Military Park in Virginia,

She was a member of the National Academy of Design.Opitz, Glenn B, Editor, Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986

Later Life

In 1951 Ethel won a Fulbright Scholarship to Greece where she and her husband, Bruce Currie, spent 1951-52.

Death

Magafan died April 24, 1993, in Woodstock, New York, at the age of 76.

Awards

Her many awards include, among others:

* Stacey Scholarship (1947)
* Tiffany Fellowship (1949)
* Fulbright Grant (1951-52)
* Tiffany Fellowship (1949)
* Benjamin Altman Landscape Prize, National Academy of Design (1955)
* Medal of Honor, Audubon, Artists (1962)
* Henry Ward Granger Fund Purchase Award, National Academy of Design (1964)
* Childe Hassam Fund Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters (1970)
* Silver Medal, Audubon Artists (1983)
* Champion International Corporation Award, Silvermine Guild, New Canaan, Connecticut (1984)
* John Taylor Award, Woodstock Artists Association, Woodstock, New York (1985)
* Harrison Cady Award, American Watercolor Society (1987)
* Grumbacher Gold Medal, Audubon Artists (1990)

References

Biography

{{DEFAULTSORT:Magafan, Ethel
1916 births
1993 deaths
Painters from Chicago
Artists from Colorado Springs, Colorado
American muralists
American twins
Artists of the American West
20th-century American painters
Section of Painting and Sculpture artists
20th-century American women painters
American women muralists