Michael Lenson

'''Michael Lenson''' (February 21, 1903 – June 9, 1971) was an American realist painter. ''Who Was Who in American Art'' called him "New Jersey's most important muralist."<ref name=creating>{{cite news|last1=Falkenstein |first1=Michelle |title=Creating Murals With Paint And Purpose|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/nyregion/creating-murals-with-paint-and-purpose.html|accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=New York Times|date=August 24, 2003}}</ref> He is valued for his skill as a draftsman and the technique he achieved by close study of the Old Masters.

==Biography==

[[File:Mining (mural study, Mount Hope, West Virginia Post Office) SAAM-1962.8.11 1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Study for ''Mining'' (1942), Lenson's mural for the post office in Mount Hope, West Virginia, commissioned by the Section of Painting and Sculpture]] Michael Lenson was born as Michael Levenson in Galich, Russia, on February 21, 1903, and emigrated to the United States in 1911. He studied at the National Academy of Design, where he won the $10,000 Chalonier Paris Prize in 1928.<ref>{{cite news|title=In the Galleries: Exhibitions Many and Varied|first=Howard |last=Devree |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/04/30/105128971.pdf|accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=New York Times|date=April 30, 1933}}</ref> This supported four years of additional studies in Europe: at the Slade School of Art in London, the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris, and in the Netherlands.

He returned from Europe to face an inhospitable art market during the Great Depression. He told an interviewer years later: "I was no more a conquering hero, I came back to nothing."<ref name=creating/> He applied for work with the New York unit of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, but was rejected because he exceeded the income requirement since one of his brothers was a doctor and the family owned a dry cleaning business. In 1936 he reapplied successfully in New Jersey by not admitting to any family sources of support. He rose to become assistant state supervisor of mural projects for the WPA in New Jersey. He completed several major murals and he supervised a dozen more by other artists. He stayed with the WPA until the program ended in 1943.<ref name=creating/>

His surviving WPA murals, all in Newark, include ''History of the Enlightenment of Man'' at Weequahic High School; ''History of Newark'' in the council chambers at Newark City Hall; and ''The Four Freedoms'' at the Fourteenth Avenue School. Three others were destroyed: ''The History of New Jersey'', a 16-by-75-foot mural at the Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona,<ref>{{cite news|title=Murals|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/11/23/88086611.pdf|accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=New York Times|date=November 23, 1936}}</ref> was destroyed during renovations; murals for the New Jersey Pavilion of the 1939 World's Fair and for the Charlton Street School in Newark were lost to demolition.<ref name=creating/>

The Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture commissioned Lenson to create a mural titled ''Mining'' (1942) for the United States post office in Mount Hope, West Virginia.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/post-office-mural-mount-hope-wv/ |title=Post Office Mural – Mount Hope WV |website=The Living New Deal |access-date=December 6, 2022 }}</ref>

In 1941 he bought a home in Nutley, New Jersey, and in 1945 he married June Rollar.<ref name=creating/>

Lenson exhibited at several New York City galleries, including Bonestell Gallery in 1947, Kende Gallery in 1951, and Cober Gallery in 1962.<ref name=creating/> A ''New York Times'' review said:<ref>{{cite news|last1=Louchheim|first1=Aline B.|title=Section of Matisse Chapel Designs Opened at Museum of Modern Art|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/14/82121576.pdf|accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=New York Times|date=December 14, 1951}}</ref> {{blockquote|The wittiest paintings of the week are those by Michael Lenson at the Kende Gallery. He paints with some sort of synthetic resins and lacquer and the resulting surfaces, not pleasing to the eye, are as hard and unyielding as the whip-like profilings that imprison his mannered figures. A good deal of imagination goes into these figures, which move from reality to fantasy with the professional ease of ballet dancers.}}

He painted in oil after 1950, adapting his earlier surrealist elements to the socialist realism of his younger years. "Where Are We Now?" (1955) protested against nuclear proliferation in a way both emotional and political. One critic described his later works as "sometimes difficult to read because they're so visually intricate" but are still perfect representatives of the politically engaged art of the Cold War years.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Sozanski|first1=Edward J.|title=A social realist who later got surreal Michael Lenson's works from the 1930s on tackled serious topics|url=http://articles.philly.com/2003-11-14/entertainment/25461373_1_paintings-mural-depression-era-social-realism|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150211055944/http://articles.philly.com/2003-11-14/entertainment/25461373_1_paintings-mural-depression-era-social-realism|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 11, 2015|accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=Philadelphia Inquirer|date=February 10, 2015}}</ref>

He painted and exhibited extensively until his death in 1971.

Lenson wrote a weekly column for the ''Newark Sunday News'', "The Realm of Art," from 1956 to 1971.<ref name=nytobit>{{cite news|title=Michael Lenson, 68, Artist and Teacher|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/06/11/79662959.pdf |accessdate=February 10, 2015|work=New York Times|date=June 11, 1971}}</ref> It made him, according to art historian William Gerdts, "New Jersey's most distinguished art critic". He taught at the Rutgers Extension School<ref name=nytobit/> and Montclair Art Museum, which acquired many of his works upon his death. He testified before a government committee in 1969 to urge increased funding for public libraries in a room decorated with his own murals.<ref name=creating/>

The Montclair Art Museum mounted a retrospective of his career in 1970.<ref name=creating/> Still a resident of Nutley, Lenson died in Orange, New Jersey, on June 9, 1971, at the age of 68.<ref name=nytobit/>

His works are in the collections of the RISD Museum, the Maier Museum of Art, the Johnson Museum at Cornell, the Newark Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, the Wolfsonian Collection, and many others.

The Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio presented a one-man retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings by Lenson, "Time, Place and Substance", in 2012–2013.<ref>[https://www.amazon.com/Time-Place-Substance-Michael-Lenson-ebook/dp/B00DLHI7IQ ''Time, Place and Substance'', Exhibition Catalog]</ref>

One of his brothers was the humorist Sam Levenson. His son is David Lenson, a professor in the Comparative Literature department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of On Drugs.

==Sources== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[http://www.michaellenson.org/ Michael Lenson website] *[http://www.wpamurals.com/lenson.htm WPAMurals.com] *[http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=14546 Oil study for "Mining"] *[http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-michael-lenson-13111 Oral history interview with Michael Lenson, 1964 Oct. 30]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenson, Michael}} Category:1903 births Category:1971 deaths Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Category:American social realist artists Category:Federal Art Project artists Category:20th-century American painters Category:American male painters Category:Artists from Essex County, New Jersey Category:People from Nutley, New Jersey Category:20th-century American male artists Category:Section of Painting and Sculpture artists