Marvin Mangus

Marvin Dale Mangus (1924 - 2009) is an Alaskan Geologist and Landscape Painter.

Marvin Dale Mangus began longing to see Alaska when he was a high school student in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He first saw the Brooks Range as a young geologist in 1947, and has painted his impressions of Alaska, ever since that first year.

In high school Mangus was interested at pursuing an art career, but as the Depression lingered on, he studied geology at Penn State. At Penn State, he was also a member of the men's gymnastics team, medaling in the 1945 AAU Gymnastics Championship, in rope-climbing. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Mangus studied landscape painting in Washington D.C. under Roger Ritasse, Eliot O'Hara and William F. Walter. Painting became the vehicle that combined his interests in art, geology, history, and the out-of-doors.

For many years Mangus worked as a geologist, first with the U.S. Geological Survey, principally in the Brooks Range, then with the Atlantic Richfield Company, and finally as a private consultant. With ARCO, from 1958-1969, he traveled to Guatemala, Bolivia, the Yukon, and Northwest Territories of Canada, finally settling in Anchorage, Alaska in 1962. During these years Mangus carried painting supplies into the field to record what he saw and experienced.

Mangus mapped the entire Arctic North Slope from the Brooks Range, starting at Cape Lisburne, over to the 141st meridian. In 1968, Mangus was with the twelve-man ARCO team that discovered the giant Kavic gas field, which ultimately led to the discovery of the famed Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. Mangus staked the drilling sites for the Discovery and Confirmation wells for ARCO.

Mangus' artwork has been exhibited in numerous shows, including the All-Alaska Juried shows, Centennial Traveling Art Exhibition, Arts Club of Washington, Baltimore Watercolor Society, Smithsonian Museum Area Show, and Corcoran Gallery of Washington D.C. Several of his paintings are in the permanent collection of the Anchorage Fine Arts Museum.

Mangus has worked in oils, acrylics and watercolors.

References

• Obituary