Alicia Wiencek Fiene

Alicia Wiencek Fiene, Jewish Student

1938

Dorothy Morton was born in New Zealand. The date is usually listed as 1905, but it also appears at 1890. She died there in 1983. It's hard to look at an mid-twentieth century intagl...

Dimensions are for sheet size. The drawing is signed in pencil at the lower right. Agnes Weinrich was one of the artists who settled in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at the ...

Maybe her name doesn’t ring a bell. Like everyone else who ever went into the old Mooresville Post Office at 305 N. Main St., across the street from the bank, I would look at the large mural over the door to the postmaster’s office — now the school district superintendent’s office — read the name of the artist, and wonder who she was. Alicia Wiencek (April 23, 1918- Feb. 17, 1961) has remained something of an enigma, at least locally. I set about finding more regarding the artist. The first clue I found about her came from a small, 1937 article in the old Mooresville Enterprise: “Miss Alicia Wiencek of New York City will paint the mural for the local [post office] building. She was in the city several days last week, looking over the various industries and talking with a number of ‘old–timers’ about Mooresville’s early history and present trend of development. She visited a number of places of business, the cotton gins and the mills, seeming to be impressed with the importance of the cotton industry, so that it is believed cotton will at least have its share of the subject matter of the decoration. “The mural will cover the space above the entrance to the postmaster’s office, a space of about 8 by 4 feet. It is not known whether Miss Wiencek will do the work here, or whether she will bring it with her completed, upon her return.” Fine, but what happened to her after she did the mural in Mooresville? What other works did she complete? Where might one go to view them? How long did Miss Wiencek stay in the Mooresville area, absorbing local color and sights? Alicia was born in Chicopee, Mass., and was apparently of Polish descent. She studied at the Art Students League in New York City. One of her instructors there was Ernest Feine (1894-1965), a naturalized citizen of German birth who was both a painter and a printmaker. He was also known for his fine murals and frescoes. Ernest, with Alicia as his assistant, worked on two murals, one for the post office in Canton, Mass., and one in Washington, D.C., in the Department of the Interior Building. The two must have worked well together, for Feine divorced his first wife and married Alicia on Aug. 13, 1945, in Connecticut. Of the two artists, Ernest is the more famous. But back to Mooresville. The official title of her oil-on-canvas work in Mooresville is “The Cotton Industry in North Carolina.” It is interesting to note that the post office building was completed and in use by August 1937, several months before Alicia received the government contract for the mural. Her work was part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, a Works Progress Administration project to put artists and writers to work during the Great Depression. The old Mooresville Post Office Building is one of several in the same style in North Carolina built according to the town’s population. The old post offices in Beaufort, Laurinburg, Marion, Siler City, Wake Forest...

Boris deutsch was born in krasnagorka lithuania june 4 1892 died in los angeles 1978.Entered the polytechnic school in riga 1905.School of applied arts berlin 1912. Settled in l.A. 1...