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mdstamper.bsky.social
Michael
@mdstamper.bsky.social
"The Fascination of Space" by Julio de Diego (Spanish-American) - Gouache on paper / 1936 - Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (Eugene, Oregon) #WomenInArt #art #JulioDeDiego #Diego #artwork #artText #WPAart #ModernArt #surrealism #surrealist #UofO #JSMA #UniversityofOregon #JordanSchnitzerMuseumofArt
A tall, slender barefoot woman in a dirty teal sleeveless dress stands with her back to us at the edge of a rocky opening. Her right hand rests at her hip as she leans forward, peering into a cavern whose mouth frames pale water and low horizon under a mottled sky. Jagged brown cliffs flank the scene; at lower right lies a broken classical column with a curled volute, and stacked stone blocks appear at lower left. The palette is cool teal, earthen brown, and gray, with crisp, simplified forms and strong contours. Spanish-born American artist Julio de Diego’s title points to “space” not as outer galaxies but as the charged void before the figure: a threshold between enclosure and expanse. The toppled column suggests a fallen order, while the woman’s poised stance with curiosity overriding fear signals modernity’s leap into the unknown. He builds the drama from oppositions: interior cave and exterior sea, ruin and possibility, gravity and imagination. The pared architecture and stylized anatomy reflect a modernist vocabulary inflected with the era’s taste for the surreal, turning landscape into psychology where we confront our own brink. Made in 1936, this gouache entered the University of Oregon’s collection through U.S. government allocation from New Deal art projects, aligning it with the Federal Art Project’s goal to sustain artists and bring art to the public during the Depression. Born in Madrid, Spain in 1900, de Diego immigrated to the United States in 1924 and settled in Chicago, where by the mid-1930s he was exhibiting at the Art Institute of Chicago. The period saw him refine a personal idiom mixing architecture, theater, and dreams as we see here in the way ruins, figure, and horizon interlock. In context of the moment of global uncertainty during the 1930s, "The Fascination of Space" captures an artist (and age) testing the edges of what comes next.
September 23, 2025 at 6:05 PM Everybody can reply
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queensmemory.bsky.social
Queens Memory Project
@queensmemory.bsky.social
☀️ Happy Summer Solstice! ☀️

Celebrate the longest day of the year with these seasonal Works Progress Administration artworks. Featuring lithograph prints by Minetta Good & Ann Nooney.

#QPLarchives #SummerSolstice #QueensLibrary #WPAArt #1930s #NewDeal #WPALithograph
June 20, 2025 at 1:11 PM Everybody can reply
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mmrtn.bsky.social
mmrtn.bsky.social
@mmrtn.bsky.social
Corgis In The Art Gallery! The original: Mervin Jules, "Watch Repair," lithograph, circa 1930. Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
#CorgisInTheArtGallery #CorgiArtParody #CorgiArt #WPAart #Corgi
March 21, 2025 at 1:34 PM Everybody can reply
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4
markstoneman.com
Mark R. Stoneman
@markstoneman.com
"Girl with Blue Hair" by Blanche Grambs. Lithograph signed by author, ca. 1935–43.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) Art Collection, NYPL Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8ebea460-d56d-0131-155d-58d385a7bbd0

#WHM #WomensHistory #Art #WPAart
Color print of a stylish African American woman with blue hair, a small hat, and blue accents on her clothing. Her partial shadow on the striped wallpaper is also blue.
March 21, 2025 at 5:39 AM Everybody can reply
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