The Workers by Florence K. Kawa
Date
Credits
- Florence K. Kawa Creator
Format
- Fabric 9
Media
- Fabric 36
Techniques
- painting 104
Dimensions
Locations Made
- United States 1018
- Milwaukee 16
- Wisconsin
The WPA Federal Art Project (FAP), active from 1935 to 1943, was a New Deal program that employed over 5,000 artists to create murals, easel paintings, sculptures, and posters for public spaces. As part of Federal Project No. 1, it aimed to provide relief to unemployed artists during the Great Depression of the 1930s while creating art for schools, hospitals, and libraries.
One particular success was the Milwaukee Handicraft Project in Wisconsin, which started in 1935 as an experiment that employed 900 people who were classified as unemployable due to their age or disability. The project came to employ about 5,000 unskilled workers, many of them women and the long-term unemployed.
This block printed wall hanging was created by Florence K. Kawa for the Milwaukee Handicraft Project using cotton muslin fabric and paint. It was created using tones of brown, red, black, blue, and gray on off-white muslin. It depicts factories and working men and women.
This piece was also presented to Elenor Roosevelt and is one of three Florence Kawa block printed wall hangings found among Eleanor Roosevelt’s belongings after Mrs. Roosevelt’s death.
