Martina Gangle Curl

Martina Gangle Curl, born December 1906 in Woodland, Washington, was one of seven children. Born into a migrant family of Austrian and Swedish descent, Curl grew up in poverty and began work as a fruit-picker at the age of eight.[1] She attended a small country school until 1920, when she moved to the Lents district of southeast Portland to live with her grandmother.[2] While living with her grandmother she attended Franklin High School where she excelled in math and physics.[1] During her high school career Curl worked part-time as a housekeeper for a local family, who encouraged her to expand her knowledge through literature. Martina started to keep a dictionary which she used to look up unfamiliar words, and avidly read Charles Dickens and Greek dramas. After Curl graduated in 1924, she received a $200 loan from her employer to use towards her education.[1] She spent a year teaching at Western Oregon University (formerly the Oregon Normal School), and afterwards worked as an elementary school instructor in Portland.[2]

Curl stopped teaching in 1926 after giving birth to her son, David, and the father abandoned them shortly after.[1] Desperate for money, Curl spent the next four years working at a boarding house in southeast Portland.[2] She received $35 a month and a bed on the back porch for herself and her baby. In 1931, she used what little savings she had accumulated plus a personal loan to enroll in the Museum Art School.[1]

When Curl started attending the University, she found herself unable to relate to her peers. While she grew up in a working-class family, many of her classmates came from upper-class backgrounds. However, she found solace from her professor and fellow painter Harry Wentz. He encouraged her to paint more expressively, and helped her receive a two-year scholarship to complete college.[1]

While in college, Curl became more aware of the wide class differences between her and her more affluent classmates. Within her first year attending the school, she came across a group of demonstrators. They gave her a pamphlet recruiting people for the communist party and introduced her to the idea of socialism.[1] As an impoverished art student living in the era of the Great Depression, Curl hoped socialism would allow her to make a living in the vocation she loved. By 1936 she joined the communist party, and applied for a position with the Federal Arts Project which started her professional artistic career.[2]

Curl gained a reputation for her social activism.[3] She was arrested several times throughout her life, as she often partook in protests and demonstrations which landed her in jail.[4] By the late 1930s her artwork became increasingly focused on her political views.[2] She advocated for workers rights, and believed socialism bridged the gap between the Christian ideals she had been taught as a child and the reality of capitalism.[5]

Known for her modernist approach to art, Curl often made prints using a western woodcut style.[5] Her work received a mixed reception. While she gained fame in the late 1930s due to her association with other artists and activists, she believed her radicalism prevented her from attaining more mainstream success.[1] Her art usually reflected the daily life of the working class, women, and life in migrant camps.[5]