Marion Greenwood

The first visit to Taxco, Mexico in 1932 marked a crucial turning point in her career, she worked on fresco murals for the Mexican government.[10] Between 1933 and 1936, Greenwood and her sister painted five separate murals in Taxco and Morelia, Mexico.[6] Her older sister Grace served as her painting assistant while working in Mexico.[11]

There she met the artist Pablo O'Higgins, who introduced and taught her fresco painting.[12] As a result, she began focusing her efforts on fresco-mural painting. Greenwood's first fresco mural was Mercado en Taxco (1933), located in the stairwell in the Hotel Taxqueño in Guerrero.[13][12]

The success of this piece led to commissions from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia, and the Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market in the historic center of Mexico City. An example of her process is evident in the preparation for the decoration at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia, Greenwood spent a year studying and immersing herself in the Purépecha indians culture before completing this project.[8]

Her work during her Mexican mural period had revolutionary themes and was influenced by the stylization of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera in its figures and dynamic compositions.[8][14]

Greenwood was the first woman to receive a mural commission from a foreign government. Shortly after these projects, she returned to the United States to create a mural for the social hall of the Westfield Acres Housing Project in Camden, New Jersey. In 1937 she was hired to teach fresco painting at Columbia University, and a year later was commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts to paint an oil mural, The Partnership of Man and Nature for the post office in Crossville, Tennessee.[15]

Greenwood's murals were often large dramatic scenes with groups of people engaged in cultural practices or in the case of a social works project, workers in their environment. Often the murals had themes of optimism, democracy, and diversity. For example, Rehearsal for African Ballet depicts a group of African-Americans playing music, singing, and dancing together. In Blueprint for the Living, workers are laying bricks and building while a family looks upon the construction.[16]

In 1939, she married British-born Charles Fenn.[17]

In 1940, she was commissioned by the Federal Art Project to paint frescoes for the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn. This project, titled Blueprint for Living, was meant for low-income citizens in government housing and expressed optimism for a more harmonious future.[8] Around 1940, Greenwood began to focus on easel painting and printmaking, generally depicting powerful, gritty scenes of working classes or insightful portraits. The subjects from the 1940s work were mainly portraits of people, often lower class individuals toiling in work or squalor from foreign regions as well as in America. Greenwood was applauded by critics for "her profound sympathy with the poor and the oppressed of all lands, her natural democratic feeling" and "her disregard of difficulties and class barriers".[16] She was seen as an advocate for these struggling figures in the same way that she supported social movements with her social realist murals.

At the start of World War II (1939–1945), Greenwood was one of only two women appointed as an artist war-correspondent with the World War II United States Army Art Program.[18] During this time she painted the reconditioning of wounded soldiers. This sometimes involved being present at surgeries to sketch and following the patient through to occupational therapy. The paintings, drawings, and etchings from this series are in the official archives of the United States War Department.[8] Abbott Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company helped fund aspects of the program.[18]

In spring 1946, she travelled with her husband Charles Fenn to lived and worked in Hong Kong, with a journey stopover in London, Burma, and India[17] Fenn had lived in Hong Kong prior to World War II and was starting a job with the United States Marines for the Office of Strategic Services, and at this time, Hong Kong was heavily influenced by British colonists.[9][17] Greenwood's travels included a four day trip to Guangzhou (formally known as Canton), China and a weekend trip to Macau.[17] She returned to New York City by herself in June 1947.[17] In December 1947, she made her solo debut with art pieces from her stay in Hong Kong at the Associated American Artists (AAA) gallery in New York City,[17] and another art exhibition was held in March 1948.

Greenwood and Fenn divorced.[18]

In 1954, Greenwood received a large commission for a 6-by-29-foot oil-on-linen mural, "The History of Tennessee" nicknamed "The Singing Mural", in the University Center student center auditorium at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.[19][20] It took a year to complete the painting, and during which Greenwood taught art courses at the university while she worked as an artist-in-residency on the mural.[21]

The mural was designed to depicted the folk traditions and music of Tennessee.[21] There are four thematic sections to the mural.[21] When the painting was completed and unveiled in June 1955, it was vandalized, hidden, and debated mostly due to images that have been perceived as of racial stereotyping.[21] One of the panels showed an adult black man farming cotton (it is unclear from the mural if he is being depicted as a slave, a sharecropper or a farmer) and he is smiling.[21]

In 1972, the mural was hidden away and covered with paneling.[21] In 2006 the mural was uncovered due to the student's requests and the “Greenwood Mural Project” was formed on campus to discuss censorship and race.[22] In 2013, the University Center building that held the mural was removed and the mural was restored put into storage.[21]