Pele de Lappe | |
---|---|
Born | Phyllis deLappe May 4, 1916 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Died | October 1, 2007 Petaluma, California, U.S. | (aged 91)
Other names | Pele deLappe, Phyllis Murdock, Phyllis Edises, Pele Edises |
Education | San Francisco Art Institute, Art Students League of New York |
Years active | 1930–2007 |
Known for | Paintings, Prints, Political Cartoons |
Movement | California Labor School, Communist Party USA |
Spouse(s) | Bert Edises (1934–1949), Steve Murdock (1953–1969) |
Partner | Byron Randall (c.1990s–1999) |
Children | 2 |
Phyllis de Lappe, also known as Pele de Lappe or Pele deLappe (1916–2007)[1][2] was an American artist, known for her social realist paintings, prints, and drawings. She also worked as a journalist, newspaper editor, illustrator, and political cartoonist. de Lappe had been a resident for many years in Berkeley, California and later, Petaluma, California.
She was born as Phyllis deLappe on May 4, 1916 in San Francisco, California and was the fourth-generation of her family born in San Franciscan.[3][2] Her father, Wes deLappe was a commercial artist and her mother was Dorothy Sheldon deLappe.[4][5][6]
She started her career as an artist at age 14, studying art at California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute) under Arnold Blanch.[2][7] Two years later she continued education at Art Students League of New York, working with artists Edward Lansing, Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Sloan and Charles Locke.[3][4][7] While in New York, she befriended artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in the 1930s.[8] This was during Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural, Man at the Crossroads and de Lappe modeled and assisted on the mural.[8]
By 1934, she returned to San Francisco, joined the Communist party and became active in the labor movement.[5] She taught figure drawing at the California Labor School during the 1940s.[5] She also worked in the 1940s as an editor and political cartoonist for The People's World, a labor movement newspaper.[7] She additionally worked as an illustrator for other newspapers, including: Daily Worker, The New Masses, L'Unita Operaia, West Oakland Beacon, and the San Francisco Chronicle.[7]
In 1952, de Lappe alongside several artists from the California Labor School went on and founded the Graphic Arts Workshop (GAW), a cooperative printmaking studio in San Francisco.[5][7][9]
In 1999, she published her autobiography, Pele: A Passionate Journey through Art and the Red Press.[6][10]
Her artwork is in many public collections, including: National Gallery of Art,[11] the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery,[12][13] Fine Art Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF),[1] Syracuse University, and the Library of Congress.[14][7]
In 1934, she married lawyer, Bertram "Bert" Edises and together they had two children. The couple divorced in 1949.[5] She was married from 1953 until 1969 to Steve Murdock, a writer for People's World the labor movement newspaper.[5]
She moved to Petaluma in the 1990 to be closer to her friend and longtime partner, artist Byron Randall and this romance lasted until his death in 1999.[6][15]