Discipline: Visual Art

Stuyvesant Van Veen

Discipline: Visual Art
Region: Pawling, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1931, 1935, 1938
Stuyvesant Van Veen (1910-1988) was an American artist and muralist. He studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. In 1929 at the age of 19, he became the youngest contributor to an international exhibition of modern paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. This notoriety led him to be commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture to paint "Pittsburgh Panorama" in 1937. The mural hangs in courtroom No. 3 in the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, downtown Pittsburgh. In the mural, the Westinghouse Bridge frames the city. Decades later, Van Veen, who had leftist beliefs, revealed in an interview that he gave the Monongahela River an especially pointed bend, his subtle way of inserting a sickle into the scene. He also painted many other murals for the Federal Art Project, at venues such as the Ebbets Field apartments, the New York World's Fair, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and the Family Court building in Philadelphia. He taught painting at City College of New York.

Studios

Adams

Stuyvesant Van Veen worked in the Adams studio.

Given to the MacDowell Association by Margaret Adams of Chicago, the half-timbered, stuccoed Adams Studio was designed by MacDowell Fellow and architect F. Tolles Chamberlin ca. 1914. Chamberlin was primarily a painter, but also provided designs for the Lodge and an early renovation of the main hall. The studio’s structural integrity was restored during a thorough renovation in…

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