Singing and Mending

1946

Singing and Mending, 1946. Robert Gwathmey (American, 1903–1988). Color screenprint; sheet: 41.1 x 47.3 cm (16 3/16 x 18 5/8 in.); image: 30.6 x 36 cm (12 1/16 x 14 3/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2001.98 © VAGA, New York, NY Working in the mid-20th century through the 1980s, the social-realist painter Robert Gwathmey's work mingles memories of his pleasant childhood in the South with his observations of the physical and financial hardships of primarily Black, poor Southern farm workers as an adult. Gwathmey's lens—that of a white man living in New York City and educated in Europe—brought a modernist sensibility to scenes that focused on individual figures or family groups. In Singing and Mending, he employed expressive distortion of the human figures and a reduction and simplification of forms derived from Picasso and the Fauves, using flat areas of color, encouraged by the screenprinting technique. Focusing on the intimacy of a family moment at the end of a work day, he emphasized the creative industry of the couple as well as their work-worn hands and feet.