Frank Mechau

Frank Albert Mechau Jr. (1904–1946), was an American artist and muralist whose distinctive style and lyric visual expressions of the American West earned him an important place in American art. He was born in Wakeeney, Kansas to Frank Albert Mechau (pronounced may-show) and Alice Livingstone Mechau. The family moved to Glenwood Springs, Colorado when Frank Mechau, Jr. was a young boy, and the vast western slope of Colorado remained home ground for the rest of his short life. It provided an extraordinary landscape that stimulated admiration and love of place that never left him.

Mechau’s aspiration to become an artist began early in his life and developed rapidly. His determination led to a distinguished career that included three Guggenheim fellowships, thirteen public mural commissions, and work featured in dozens of national and international exhibitions. Many of his paintings are currently in private collections and museums around the U.S, and his murals adorn the walls of public buildings in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and Washington DC.

Education

Mechau was essentially a self-taught artist; he studied widely and primarily on his own. Upon graduating from high school in Glenwood Springs he briefly attended Denver University on a scholarship enabling him to teach boxing while absorbing all he could from classes in art, history, and literature. He also tried out evening classes at the Denver Art Academy, but was disillusioned by what he found there. Undeterred, he made his way to artistic centers further east, first to the Art Institute of Chicago and then to New York City to explore art schools there. Those prospects proved disappointing. Hungry for rigor and substance, he set his sights on Europe. Until he could get there, he frequented New York’s museums and art galleries, absorbing all he could, working in bookstores, and painting as time allowed. It was during this time that he met Paula Ralska, an aspiring actress, who became his wife and one of his most enthusiastic proponents. In 1929, the couple sold their books, prints, and furniture and bought a one-way ticket on a steamer to Paris.

Against all odds, within six months of their arrival Paula landed an excellent job. Soon after, a house with a studio was found and Mechau set to work painting full time. He experimented with Europe's current artistic trends such as cubism and surrealism, but kept infusing his painting with personally distinctive stylistic elements. He and Paula met and socialized with notable artists and writers living in Paris at the time, and it wasn’t long before Mechau made a name for himself in Parisian art circles. His work was included in distinguished exhibitions and favorably reviewed by Paris art critics who recognized unique qualities in the work of this young American artist.

The Mechaus took advantage of Paula's vacation breaks to travel in Europe so that Frank could study the work of his favorite artists, among them Italian Renaissance painters Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca. Upon returning to Paris, Mechau became convinced that what he needed most was to return home, that America was the place for American artists—and the panorama of Colorado beckoned. With an established European reputation and his first child only a few months old, he and Paula and their young daughter Vanni returned to the U.S. in 1932, the country embroiled in the Great Depression.

Artistic career

Having returned to the U.S., Mechau was urged but did not accept the advice of colleagues to settle in New York since it had become recognized as the world's leading art center—and therefore critically important to aspiring artists. Instead, he headed home to paint what he knew best—the people, landscapes, and horses of the country he loved, with Denver as a starting place. His European experience landed him a teaching position at the Kirkland School of Art, and he caught the attention of Denver arts enthusiasts with a lecture series he gave on contemporary French and American painting. Anne Evans, a prominent member of the Denver Artists Club, was among his new admirers, and was instrumental in Mechau landing his first mural commission through the federal government's Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in 1934. That mural, Horses at Night, was widely praised by American art critics, and he quickly became recognized as one of the country's most promising young artists.

That remarkable success led to Mechau receiving two more Guggenheim Fellowships in 1934. He was Colorado's first recipient of the honor and one of the first to be allowed to continue working in the U.S. instead of Europe. He immersed himself in his home territory and began drawing and painting, saturating himself with ideas and subjects for his work. In 1935, he was invited to join the teaching staff at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. By that time, his first son Dorik and second daughter Duna had joined the family. And it was the beginning of a remarkably productive few years for Mechau that combined teaching, the execution of five more murals for government commissions, and the completion of his one and only fresco, Wild Horses, a sixty-foot-long panel incorporated into an exterior wall of the new Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center designed by noted architect John Gaw Meem.

Three significant events took place in 1938. First, Mechau met renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright whom he deeply admired. Wright had been invited to Colorado Springs to deliver the keynote address at a conference on The Arts in American Life. Conversations after the conference between Mechau and Wright resulted in an invitation for Mechau to visit Taliesen West, Wright's winter home and school in Arizona. Second, the Mechau family decided to move to the charming mountain village of Redstone, a stones throw from Glenwood Springs, after a momentous visit there the previous summer (see Family section below). And finally, Mechau received his third Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to step away from teaching at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and devote full-time to painting in his Redstone studio.

At this point Mechau faced the challenge of completing several of the largest of his commissioned murals on a short timeline. Fortunately, three of his most talented students at the Fine Arts Center—the twins Ethel and Jenny Magafan, and Eduardo Chavez—eagerly accepted Mechau's invitation to come to Redstone to assist him. These talented young people had first been drawn to Mechau because of his approach to teaching art through apprenticeships and they saw this as a rare opportunity for an extended collaboration with him. It proved to be remarkably productive—and looking back it is hard to imagine how Mechau could have met the deadlines for completing these murals without their contributions. And the rich experiences gained by his apprentices during this summer period in Redstone led to a flowering of their artistic talents, commissioned murals of their own, and widespread recognition.

Mechau visited Taliesen early in 1939. He relished the opportunities there to explore the fertile ground where the interests of the two men coincided about philosophical and tangible dimensions of art and architecture. After returning to Redstone, he realized that the New Deal's PWA art commissions were ebbing and sensed the need to immerse himself once again in teaching. As luck would have it, he heard from a friend that Columbia University was searching for a notable artist to head up its Department of Painting and Sculpture. He applied for the position and his appointment soon followed, highlighted in his hometown newspaper, the Glenwood Post, in May1939.

Mechau taught at Columbia for close to four years. The prestigious position was not without its challenges; he found little time to devote to painting, and further had to divide his attention between work and his devotion to his family. They had moved with him to New York for the first two academic years, spending important summers in Redstone, but that arrangement proved very expensive and Mechau later returned to Columbia without them.

In the spring of 1943, at the end of the academic year, Mechau was invited to participate in a government project focused on artistic documentation of U.S. Armed Forces participation in World War II. He lead a four-artist unit on assignment to the Caribbean and Panama. Mechau's lively journals written during the trip recount his fascination with people and places he saw and perilous adventures flying through tropical storms to move from site to site. The twelve paintings he produced are now held in the Army Art Collection at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Fort McNair, DC.

Upon returning to Redstone after this trip, Mechau was less inclined to return to the academic world at Columbia. In August, 1943, he requested a leave of absence that ultimately became his resignation from his position there. Mechau then happily settled into life with his family in Redstone, and in the next couple of years produced some of his iconic paintings depicting people and landscapes central his life, including the iconic Tom Kenney Comes Home, Dorik and His Colt, Children's Hour, and Autumn Roundup. Deer in Moonlight, painted early in 1946 would be his last work. Mechau's untimely death from a heart attack in March of that year cut short his extraordinarily full life and distinguished artistic career.

Murals

Between 1934 and 1940 Mechau was awarded a total of eleven mural commissions through Roosevelt's Public Works of Art Project. Horses at Night was followed in 1935 by two Mechau murals that were selected for placement in the new Post Office Department Building designed to incorporate large works of art. Each of the competition winners created a pair of murals. Mechau's depicted aspects of mail delivery during years of U.S. westward expansion. Pony Express features riders and their horses at a checkpoint along the Pony Express route. Dangers of the Mail portrays a savage attack by Native Americans on a mail stagecoach and its occupants. The mural caused controversy when it was first viewed because of nude female figures in the painting. More serious objections to it arose again in 2000 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made the building (now known as the William Jefferson Clinton Building) its headquarters. This time a number of Native American EPA employees insisted that the mural, along with five others in the building, conveyed racist stereotypes and contributed to a hostile work environment. The complaints led to a lengthy Government Services Administration (GSA) public review process which included a demand that Dangers of the Mail be removed and GSA's decision not to do so. Ultimately, the mural was blocked from public view and remains so to this day, though it may be seen by appointment.

In 1936 Mechau had completed three new mural commissions for Post Office Buildings in Glenwood Spring and Colorado Springs, Colorado. One of them, Indian Fight, currently occupies the Denver Federal Center in Denver, CO. The Corral and Wild Horse Race can now be seen at the Byron Rogers U.S. Courthouse in Denver. Mechau's mural Longhorns, completed in 1938, occupies the Post Office Building in Ogallala, Nebraska.

Fighting a Prairie Fire, also completed in 1938, was commissioned for the post office in Brownfield, Texas—now sheltered at the Brownfield Police Station. The following historical marker has been placed in front of the building with text reading: "Fighting A Prairie Fire by Frank Mechau. Mechau, a resident of Colorado, was selected by the WPA to paint a mural for the Brownfield Post Office which he completed in October 1940. The work of Frank Mechau stands as a magnificent documentation of The West. The promising young artist died in 1946. According to the artist, 'The prairie fire was a demon of the Panhandle. Sixty square miles of range could be destroyed in a day's time. Once the flame began to spread there were few efficient ways to combat it. Plowing a line was too slow, backfiring too dangerous. Cowboys would fight the fire with wet sacks or kill a steer and partly skin it leaving the wet skin to drag behind in an effort to rub out the edge of the fire. (Terry County Historical Commission).

Mechau's last murals with the PWAP were three oil-on-canvas panels commissioned for the Eldon B. Mahon United States Courthouse building located in Fort Worth, Texas. The Taking of Sam Bass, Two Texas Rangers, and Flags Over Texas were the only New Deal art commission sponsored in Fort Worth.

Family

During the 1937 summer break in Mechau's teaching years in Colorado Springs, he and his Paula visited the abandoned model mining town of Redstone, thirty miles south of his hometown of Glenwood Springs. Redstone had been created at the turn of the century by John Cleveland Osgood, president of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, but operations there were shut down abruptly in 1910, leaving the village virtually deserted. Its history was fascinating, but that was not what captured the Mechaus. Paula was stunned by the beauty of the Crystal River Valley and the charm of the place. When they learned there were attractive houses for sale, they made a bold decision to purchase property there, intending to make Redstone their permanent home. They returned to Colorado Springs after this visit so Mechau could complete his teaching obligations. At the end of that year, their second son Mike was born and the following spring, the family was able to move. Redstone became the cornerstone of their lives, a place they had to leave from time to time during Mechau's career and after his death, but the home to which they always returned with great joy.