Leon Bibel
242 pages, 7 x 10
126 color and 119 B-W images
Hardcover
Release Date:13 May 2025
ISBN:9781978825758
Leon Bibel (1913–1995) was a prolific modern American artist who painted, printed, stamped, etched, sketched, and carved. He produced pieces that ranged from social realism to dreamy expressionism and was an aesthetic experimentalist, never working for too long in any medium or style. And despite Bibel's obvious talent, his work would have languished in obscurity were it not for the New Deal programs like the Federal Art Project and Public Works of Art Project.
Leon Bibel, the first biography of this eclectic artist, recounts his life from his birth in Szczebrzeszyn, Poland, in 1913, to his death in New Jersey in 1995. After immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, Bibel came of age during the Great Depression, when New Deal agencies recognized his abilities and supported his artistic endeavours. Working-class artists faced challenges after these programs folded, and Bibel would later spend twenty years as a New Jersey chicken farmer before resurrecting his art career in the 1960s.
Historian Richard Haw shows how Bibel's life was defined by the New Deal, his visionary artwork shaped by the era's commitment to social and economic justice. With reproductions of more than 240 of Bibel's works, many in vivid color, this book reveals how he depicted everything from the trauma of unemployment to the dignity of work, from the horrors of lynching to the pleasures of everyday life.
Leon Bibel, the first biography of this eclectic artist, recounts his life from his birth in Szczebrzeszyn, Poland, in 1913, to his death in New Jersey in 1995. After immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, Bibel came of age during the Great Depression, when New Deal agencies recognized his abilities and supported his artistic endeavours. Working-class artists faced challenges after these programs folded, and Bibel would later spend twenty years as a New Jersey chicken farmer before resurrecting his art career in the 1960s.
Historian Richard Haw shows how Bibel's life was defined by the New Deal, his visionary artwork shaped by the era's commitment to social and economic justice. With reproductions of more than 240 of Bibel's works, many in vivid color, this book reveals how he depicted everything from the trauma of unemployment to the dignity of work, from the horrors of lynching to the pleasures of everyday life.
In this powerfully illustrated work, Haw has elegantly recovered both the life and the prolific and varied art of Polish Jewish immigrant Leon Bibel. Haw shows how the New Deal's art projects enabled Bibel and a generation of artists—especially art teachers—to experiment aesthetically and to portray the struggles of the times. Haw's account highlights both the obstacles inhibiting, and the factors encouraging, creative expression: the support of government, community, and friends.
This book inserts Bibel's biography into well-defined yet eminently readable historical accounts of some of the complex challenges facing American political and cultural identity from 1920 to the 1970s. Haw has done a splendid job of bringing together the engaging and complex personal story of an American Jewish immigrant artist whose energy, spirit, and stylistic inventiveness will engage various kinds of readers.
Leon Bibel moves beyond the artistic canon to offer an illuminating case study of the 'cultural front.' Bibel's art, compelling in the emotions it evokes that bespeak his times and observations, is perfectly complemented by the clarity and facility of Haw's writing.
RICHARD HAW is a professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He is the author of The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History, Art of the Brooklyn Bridge: A Visual History, and Engineering America: The Life and Times of John A. Roebling.
Introduction: Leon Bibel, American Art, and the New Deal
1 Beginning: Freedom and Tradition in a Polish Shtetl (1912–1926)
2 Learning: Art and Diversity in San Francisco (1927–1935)
3 Arriving: An Artist in New York (1935–1936)
4 Thriving: New York and the Federal Art Project (1936–1938)
5 Departing: The End of New York (1938–1942)
6 Living: An Artist and a Chicken Farmer in New Jersey (1942–1995)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
1 Beginning: Freedom and Tradition in a Polish Shtetl (1912–1926)
2 Learning: Art and Diversity in San Francisco (1927–1935)
3 Arriving: An Artist in New York (1935–1936)
4 Thriving: New York and the Federal Art Project (1936–1938)
5 Departing: The End of New York (1938–1942)
6 Living: An Artist and a Chicken Farmer in New Jersey (1942–1995)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Related Titles
Envisioning New Jersey
An Illustrated History of the Garden State
By Maxine N. Lurie and Richard F. Veit
