Artist: Joseph Amadeus Fleck
Encontro: 1937
museu: Smithsonian's National Postal Museum (Washington, United States)
Técnica: Mural
The Earth is still, the sun shining brightly, and the wind is light among the Indigenous Peoples of the vast Plains of America. Tribes people move about as usual, walking, visiting, each having a place and a purpose. Suddenly, a noise in the distance… a rattling, rumbling, jingling, whipping-noise fills the ears of all who are near. Horses, unfamiliar with such a disturbance, become spooked! Disturbed and confused, the tribal village drops their work and stares at an unfamiliar transportation vehicle carrying people and cargo while it sweeps across their land. Some men grab their weapons of choice, perhaps expecting an attack, while others simply stare in uncertainty. This is the depicting scene witnessed by on lookers today who view Joseph Fleck’s painting, Red Man of Oklahoma Sees the First Stage Coach. Mr. Fleck was chosen as part of a “48 States Competition” to create a mural for a post office as a part of the New Deal-era economy restoration efforts of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s New Deal wasn’t just saving lives in poverty, but making an historic landmark of art expression ranging all over the United States. Rich history is spilled out through Joseph Fleck in his 1937 painting that still hangs on the walls of what was once the original post office in Hugo, Oklahoma. While this building has survived, it now houses the Hugo School System Administration. Some artworks featuring Native Americans done during Roosevelt’s New Deal-era came to be more or less accurate than Red Man of Oklahoma Sees the First Stage Coach, yet there is no doubt that the high emotions running through this painting are precise. Stagecoach technology never seen by a civilization with little contact outside of their niche would likely bring emotions such as fear, anxiety, and perhaps even anger. Those blessed to come in contact with the painting as fine art, will at the same time see a terrible vision for the indigenous tribe depicted as the invaders spill onto their homeland. Success and survival tactics for the indigenous world, as they knew it, was beginning to slow, while the stagecoach speeds by, whirl-winding an ominous foretelling of drastic change to come.In 1892, the artist Joseph Amadeus Fleck was born in the village of Sziklos, within Austro-Hungary. Fleck studied lithography, etching, and engraving at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Institute of Applied Arts) and drawing and painting at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Academy of Fine Arts) in Vienna, Italy. “His primary instructors at the Akademie, Hans Tichi and Rudolph Bacher, were fringe members of the Vienna Secession led by Gustav Klimt.”After World War I erupted in 1914, Fleck was drafted into the Italian Army and sent to the front lines. “Luckily for him, his artistic skills earned him an unofficial position as the regimental artist and, upon his return to Vienna after his first tour of duty, he was given a position painting patriotic images and portraits of notable government and military figures.” When the war came to an end, Fleck began to finish his studies at the Academy of Fine Art and then, several years later, he immigrated to the United States.His first destination was Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked as the chief designer of Tiffany’s stained-glass operation there. The talented artist had opportunity to paint numerous portraits of prestigious personages around Kansas City, including the Mayor; all “before he attended an art exhibition that would forever change his life.” In the summer of 1924, Fleck visited Taos Society of Artists exhibition in Kansas City during his first visit to Taos. He seemed to enjoy either Taos or the exhibition so much that he moved there in 1925, bringing his newly-wedded wife Mabel Davidson Mantz. He apparently found love in just the right place when Mabel’s family connections aided Fleck’s art career in Kansas City and Fort Worth, Texas. “Eventually Fleck had a studio on La Loma, a neighborhood just west of Taos Plaza, where artists W. Herbert Dunton and Blanche Grant also lived.”“When the Great Depression decreased tourist traffic to Taos, Fleck ‘resolved to go to the clients’ according to his son, Joseph Fleck Jr.” However, the oil industry was booming in Oklahoma and Texas, so this is where Mr. Fleck would travel for work. While finding work among those who would pay to have him, Joseph found a financial cushion on the Works Project Administration mural commissions in “Raton, New Mexico; Hugo, Oklahoma; and the New Mexico State Capitol at Santa Fe (never finished).” In the1940s, after using the WPA to his advantage, Fleck picked up a job for the University of Kansas City, now the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He also managed to find time to paint murals for the student union at UMKC that still hang there today. Later in the 1940s, Mr. Fleck decided to build a new studio in Talpa, a village south of Taos. His painting style at first was strict and often seen as having an “academic” approach; however, as ../..
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