Collection Information

Size: Transcript: 34 pages

Format: Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 22 min.

Summary: Blazek speaks of his childhood in Baltimore; early art and music training; commercial art; ceramics; working with aluminum; his move to Los Angeles; works completed for federal projects; his paintings of California missions; the lack of government censorship; and the value of federal projects. He recalls David Ebstrom, Lorser Feitelson, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright.

Biographical/Historical Note

Anton Blazek (1902-1974) was a painter and sculptor in Los Angeles, California.

Provenance

This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Anton Blazek, 1965 April 13. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.