A b r a h a m-- A j a y ---- - b . 1 9 1 9
The following excerpt is from an article by Ajay for Art in America recalling his Federal Work Project experience ("Working for the WPA," Art in America, Sept/Oct 1972): "If all goes well, there could be a major revival of interest in American art and artists of the thirties, rivaling in scope, perhaps, the current appeal of the Tiffany lampshade, the Indianhead penny and the Thonet bentwood chair. The most significant milestone of that Great Depression decade was the WPA Federal Art Project, a venture in government patronage of the arts which kept many of us alive and working in a hungry time when thirty-nine cents bought a banquet platter of franks and beans at any Stewart's Cafeteria. The young were afforded the benefit of both doubt and experience, and encouraged, along with the wise and the weary, to sit up of a Friday night and take a little broth at | McSorley's wonderful saloon. Here one might endure Henry Glimtenkamp's latest discourse on Orozco and the merits of Mexican broads or attend little Abraham Walkowitz as he doodled his 407th final rememberance of Isadora Duncan. The generation gap of the sixties was a full thirty light years away. It was a good and brotherly time. . . . If a true picture of the art scene in this country during the lean and hungry Depression is to be painted, it will be the artists themselves who must at least stretch the canvas. And if it were to be done, I would recommend that it be done quickly, because it is a matter of some small time before the final roll is called up yonder. Unlike old cavalrymen, artists are more inclined to drop dead than fade away, going no longer to heaven or hell but, through some divine propulsion, directly to the Marlborough Gallery from Frank E. Campbell's Funeral Chapel." |
| A Thinking Woman- - c.1935, Lithograph. Edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. Image size 13 x 10 3/8 inches (330 x 264 mm); sheet size 20 5/8 x 13 inches (524 x 330 mm). A fine impression, with full margins (1 5/8 to 4 inches), on off-white wove paper, in excellent condition. Stamped NEW YORK CITY WPA ART PROJECT, with the WPA number G-10349 in pencil, the lower left margin. Collection: NYPL. Created for the New York City WPA. SOLD |  |