Charlot murals on campus

This summer, the Georgia Museum of Art is featuring art created during the Great Depression as part of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration jobs program:

The Georgia Museum of Art will showcase three exhibitions that focus on art from this era this summer: “Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Steven and Susan Hirsch Collection,” organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and on view July 6 through Sept. 15; “Larger Than Life: Mural Studies,” on view through Sept. 8; and “Women of the WPA,” on view through Sept. 8.

Among the featured artists is Jean Charlot, who created murals on the UGA campus,

Born in Paris, and of French, Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, Charlot studied informally at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and eventually moved to Mexico, where he became one of Diego Rivera’s assistants. Rivera and the other members of the Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of Mexico dedicated themselves to producing public art for the lower or popular class of society.

During the early 1940's Charlot was invited by Lamar Dodd to be the artist-in-residence at UGA, where he instructed art students while working on murals in the area. The murals painted by Charlot on campus can be seen beneath the portico on the front of the Fine Arts Building (pictured here) and in Brooks Hall.

Art is all around you. Visit the museum this summer, and notice the very fine examples of WPA-era artwork on your next visit to Brooks Hall or the theatre department.