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O. LOUIS GUGLIELMI
(American, born Egypt, 1906-1956)
Odd Fellows Hall, 1934
Oil on canvas
24 x 30”
Allocation from the United States Government (Federal Art Project) L1943.2.63

Born in Egypt to Italian parents, Guglielmi was essentially raised in an Italian slum in Harlem, New York. His artistic education commenced around 1920, when he began painting classes at the National Academy of Design, and sculpture courses at the Beaux Arts Institute. He also received a fellowship from the Tiffany Foundation, and he held several commercial art jobs. Although his early works were linked with the geometric forms and flat planes of Precisionism, his work after about 1933 focused more on muted colors and the strange special arrangements seen in the works of Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. For the remainder of his short life, Guglielmi chose to represent ordinary—and often downtrodden—people in impoverished settings. His socially conscious attitude may have drawn him to the Works Progress Administration, for which he worked from 1934-39. Odd Fellows Hall, an eerie streetscape executed in Guglielmi’s characteristic color palette and perspective, was created during the artist’s tenure at the W.P.A.

The W.P.A. was a government funded arts program established to provide economic relief to Americans suffering through the Great Depression. The organization, with projects geared toward visual and performing artists and writers, aimed to combine the creativity of artists with the values of the American people. The Federal Art Project (F.A.P.) was a division of the W.P.A. that employed painters and muralists, printmakers and sculptors, teachers and models. From 1935 through the mid-1940s, the F.A.P. created over 5,000 jobs for artists throughout the country who, in turn, produced over 225,000 works of art for the American people. Receiving a stipend between $23.00 and $35.00 per week, participating artists, who included Guglielmi, Ben Shahn, and Mitchell Siporin, were often commissioned to complete mural projects for public spaces such as post offices, libraries, and hospitals across the country. The University of Kentucky, for example, preserves a striking mural depicting the history of Lexington by W.P.A. artist Ann Rice O’Hanlon in Memorial Hall.