Mitchell Siporin (1910–1976) was a Social Realist American painter.[1][2]
Mitchell Siporin | |
---|---|
Born | New York City | May 5, 1910
Died | 1976 (aged 65–66) Newton, Massachusetts |
Known for | Painter |
Movement | Social Realism |
Mitchell Siporin was born on May 5, 1910, in New York City[3] to Hyman, a truck driver, and Jennie Siporin, both immigrants from Poland,[4] and grew up in Chicago.[2][5] Siporin attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He did illustrations for Esquire and other magazines. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Siporin worked as a painter for the Illinois Art Project through the Works Progress Administration.[6] Together with Edward Millman, he painted "the largest single mural project awarded for a post office by the Section of Fine Arts" in the Central Post Office in St Louis, Missouri.[5]
In late 1943 he was deployed as a sergeant in the Army Artist Unit, where he served alongside Rudolph von Ripper. He sent back drawings and watercolours from North Africa and Italy.[7]
He married Miriam Tane in Manhattan to November 9, 1945.[8] He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945 and 1947.[9] In 1949, he won the Prix de Rome in painting.[5]
In 1951, he founded the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University.[10] In 1956, he became the first curator of the Brandeis University Art Collection.[10]
Siporin died in 1976 in Newton, Massachusetts.[11] He was Jewish.[12]
Siporin's work is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago,[13] the Detroit Institute of Arts,[14] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[15] the Museum of Modern Art,[16] the National Gallery of Art,[17] the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[18] the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[11] the Whitney Museum of American Art,[19] and Albert G. Lane Technical High School in Chicago.[20]
In 1947 his painting End of an Era won the Logan Medal of the Arts at the 51st Annual Exhibition in Chicago.[21]