Marion Greenwood

Born in Brooklyn, Marion Greenwood became a recognized muralist as well as portrait and genre painter. She was widely traveled, and in 1932 while vacationing in Taxco, Mexico, completed a mural of native life that brought her to the attention of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. This exposure led to other mural commissions in Mexico, but by 1940 she had shifted to easel painting.

Many of her subjects dealt with the oppression of New York city life on diverse ethnic groups, but in the mid 1940s, she settled in the more rural environment of Woodstock, New York.

She was a child prodigy artist who left high school to study at the Art Students League in New York with John Sloan and George Bridgeman. She was a resident portrait painter at Yaddo, a retreat for artists in Saratoga Springs, New York, and in her teens, she also studied in Paris at Academie Colarossi.

In 1930, she sketched theater genre for The New York Times, and in 1931 made the first of several trips to the Southwest to paint Navajo Indians. From there she went to Mexico and became the first woman commissioned by the government as a muralist. She also became a prominent WPA muralist in the United States. She was elected to the National Academy of Design: ANA 1958, NA 1959. – AskArt