Edward Arcenio Chavez

Untitled (Abstract)

1958

Born in Wagonmound, New Mexico, Eduardo Chavez was an illustrator, muralist, genre and landscape painter, sculptor, and lithographer. He studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center with Boardman Robinson, Frank Mechau, Arnold Blanch, and Peppino Mangravite. Before serving in the army during WWII, Chavez painted many murals in the west. When he was demobilized from the army after WWII, he went to live in Woodstock, New York with his wife, artist Jenne Magafan. A new artistic climate developed in Woodstock after WWII. There was an influx of artists from the West and Midwest in Woodstock. Some of the these artists were Bruce Currie, Fletcher Martin, Edward Millman, Mitchell Siporin, Herman Cherry, Denny Winters, and Jenne Magafan’s sister, Ethel Magafan. In 1947, the Art Students League reestablished a summer school in Woodstock, as it had left in 1922. Chavez once remarked that even if he did not find stimulus for painting in Woodstock, he still liked living there. Chavez was a member of the Woodstock Art Association, the National Academy of Design, and the National Society of Mural Painters. He won a two-thousand dollar Tiffany Grant in 1948, the Fulbright Award in 1951, and the Childe Hassam Award in 1953. He was an instructor of art at the Art Students League from 1954 to 1958, a visiting professor of art at Colorado College from 1959 to 1960, and a professor of art at Syracuse University from 1960 to 1962.