Claire Mahl Moore
'Court' — 1930s Social Conscience, WPA Woman Artist
1936

About the Item

Claire Mahl Moore, 'Court' also 'The Authorities', woodcut, 1936, edition 5. Signed 'Mahl' and titled in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (7/8 to 2 3/8 inches), in good condition. Very scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size: 6 7/8 x 5 5/16 inches (175 x 135 mm); sheet size 10 5/8 x 8 1/2 inches (270 x 216 mm). Created for the New York City Works Progress Administration (WPA). Collection: National Gallery of Art. ABOUT THE ARTIST Claire Millman Mahl Moore (1910-1988) was married twice and is listed as Claire Glick, Claire Mahl, Claire Millman, and Claire Mahl Moore. Her formal art education began in the 1930s at the National Academy of Design, where she studied alongside Lee Krasner and at the Art Students League with Harry Wickey, Charles Locke, and Thomas Hart Benton. In Benton's class, she met Jackson Pollack, who encouraged her to attend the workshop of renowned Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, where she became part of the ‘initial nucleus’ of his Experimental Workshop in New York (1936). During the 1940s, Mahl worked at the New York atelier of Fernand Leger, and the New School for Social Research with Meyer Schapiro. In the 1950s, she studied at the San Francisco Art Institute with David Park. Mahl worked in the graphics section of the Works Progress Administration Art Project from January 1934 until April 1935, then with the Federal Art Project Graphic Division from August 1935 until April 1942. She produced over thirty government-sponsored graphic works, creating highly individualistic expressionist and surrealist portraits and works of social conscience. Mahl began exhibiting in the 1940s in New York City; in 1947, she won the ACA Gallery award for a one-woman exhibition. In San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s, she showed at the Key Gallery and the King Ubu Gallery, and in 1963 was honored with an exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. In the 1970s, she showed at the Green Mountain Gallery, NY; Wilmington Museum Downtown Gallery, Delaware; Kathryn Markel and Robert Freidus Galleries, NY; and the University of Northern Illinois at De Kalb. In 1984 her work was featured by the Rutgers Women Artists Series, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and in 1987 she had her first painting show at the June Kelly Gallery, NY. A second show followed in 1988, and another at the Sheldon Ross Gallery in Birmingham, Michigan. Mahl's work has been featured in numerous group shows, including the King Ubu Gallery commemorative exhibition at the Natsoulas-Novelozo Gallery in Davis, California, in January 1989. Additional group shows include the 'Self Portrait: Tangible Consciousness', held at Rutgers University, 1987; 'Prints by Women Associated American Artists', NY, 1986; and the Inaugural Exhibition, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, 1983. From early in her career, Mahl became interested in book arts and teaching. She began making small books in the 1940s, and while in California in the 1950s, founded 'Artists' View' magazine; in New York in the late 1960s, she founded the Children's Underground Press. She taught at the Marian Hartwell School of Design, San Francisco, 1950-56; Brooklyn College, NY, 1970-74; the Creative Women's Collective, NY, 1974; the Metropolitan Museum, Visiting Artists, Children's Program, NY; the Chicago Art Institute, 1977, and the College of Staten Island, NY, 1980-88. She received three MacDowell Colony Fellowships in 1945, 1977, and 1979, and Tiffany and Gottlieb Foundation Grants in 1980 and 1985, respectively. Mahl’s work is represented in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, British Museum (London), Brooklyn Museum, Hillstrom Museum, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Racine Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Creator:

Claire Mahl Moore (1912 - 1988)

Creation Year:

1936

Dimensions:

Height: 6.88 in (17.48 cm)Width: 5.32 in (13.52 cm)

Medium:

Woodcut

Movement & Style:

Expressionist

Period:

1930-1939