Depression-Era Sculpture of the Bay Area

By Nicholas A. Veronico and Betty S. Veronico

The Great Depression was a terrible blow for the Bay Area's thriving art community. A few private art projects kept a small number of sculptors working, but for the majority, prospects of finding new commissions were grim. By the mid-1930s, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program had gathered steam, and assistance was provided to the nation's art community. Salvation came from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed thousands of artists to produce sculpture for public venues. The Bay Area art community subsequently benefitted from the need to fill the then-forthcoming Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) with sculpture of all shapes and sizes. As bad as the Depression was, its legacy more than 80 years on is one of beauty. The Bay Area is dotted with sculpture from this era, the majority of it on public display. Depression-Era Sculpture of the Bay Area is a visual tour of this artistic bounty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781439661789

Book preview

only.

INTRODUCTION

Sculpture has been with humankind since early recorded history. Cave art from the Franco-Cantabrian area (northern Spain to southern France) from the Upper Paleolithic period (approximately 6,000 years BCE) contained a small number of bas-reliefs, but it was the Assyrians (approximately 911–612 BCE), Babylonians, and Hittites (approximately 1400–1200 BCE) in ancient Mesopotamia who produced great numbers of reliefs. They typically depicted kings, war, the hunt, or various godlike figures. The earliest sculpture from Southeast Asia was carved between 2600 and 1300 BCE by people along the Indus River valley, an area that is today’s Pakistan and northern India.

In the United States, artists were thriving during the 1920s. However, this period of prosperity came to an end, marked by the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. As the administration of Pres. Herbert Hoover tried to maneuver its way through the global financial crisis, farms and businesses were failing, workers were losing their jobs, and people were wondering where their next meal would come from. By 1932, one in four Americans was unable to find work and that statistic would not substantially improve, down to only 15 percent unemployed, until 1940.

President Roosevelt was elected in 1932, and through the influence of his friend, lawyer-turned-artist George Biddle, was motivated to help the art community. Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee to the Treasury on Fine Arts, which advocated for a relief program. The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first of four New Deal art programs, put 14,000 artists to work receiving a government paycheck. The PWAP lasted for 12 months and, in 1934, was replaced by the Department of the Treasury’s Section of Painting and Sculpture—known as the Section. The Section was terminated in 1942, having accumulated more than 1,300 murals and 300 sculptures. Simultaneous to the Section, the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) lasted from 1935 to 1938 and sought to create art for federal government buildings.

The Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP, 1935–1942) was the largest of the government’s art initiatives. From 1935 to 1943, artists in the FAP produced over 108,000 easel paintings, 11,300 fine prints, 2,500 murals, and 18,000 sculpture works. Under the 1939 Reorganization Act, all four programs (PWAP, the Section, TRAP, and FAP) were consolidated into the newly formed Federal Works Agency.

In addition to the federal art assistance programs, many states, including California, received federal funds to run local artist relief programs.

THE DEPRESSION’S LAST GREAT PUBLIC SCULPTURES