Shaffer, Myer, 1911-1983
Painter, Art critic
Size: 0.2 Linear feet
Summary: A scrapbook that contains miscellaneous newpaper/magazine articles, a portrait of the artist, exhibition notices, letters, and articles on art activity in Los Angeles written by Shaffer for the Jewish Community Press between 1937-1938. Other items include a program for the play "We are Children of the People" for which Shaffer painted the scenery and a family portrait.
Painter; Los Angeles, Calif.; b. 1912; d. 1973 Shaffer worked with the federal art projects of the 1930s. The destruction of his mural at the Mount Sinai home created controversy in 1938, as did the addition of a clenched fist (communist salute) above his mural at the L.A. Sanitorium (now City of Hope) in Duarte. As a student at the Chouinard School of Art, Shaffer assisted David Alfaro Siqueiros with his mural American Tropical (1933). Shaffer was also an art critic for the Jewish Community Press, 1937-1938.
Donated 1997 by Linda Shaffer, Myer Shaffer's daughter, via Orville Clark, an art historian who studies WPA murals and artists.
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Myer Shaffer scrapbook, [ca. 1930-1941]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
