by Laurel | May 5th, 2010
Thinking about the library I am reminded of the murals. Sante Graziani, the artist responsible for the the mural depicted above in the Holyoke Public Library (1954) died fairly recently in March of 1985.
Extracted from his obituary published in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette:
Graziani was born in Cleveland, OH in 1920. He was awarded scholarships to the Cleveland Institute of Art where he graduated in 1941 as well as Yale University, where he received both his BFA and MFA in 1943 and 1948, respectively. While serving in the U.S. Army during World War ll, Graziani met his future wife, Jacquelee McMurry, a Texas native. During the war, Graziani’s title was Officer in Charge of Arts and Crafts in the Pacific Theater of Operation. At the end of the war, he curated a major exhibition at the Imperial Museum, Tokyo. Two important government commissions included a WW ll monument in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium and a U.S. Postal stamp. From 1946-51, Graziani was a faculty member at Yale. Among his students there was pop art pioneer, Claes Oldenburg. Close colleagues at Yale included Josef Albers and Willem De Kooning. Graziani was Dean of the Whitney School of Art, New Haven from 1950-51. He was Dean, then later Dean Emeritus at both the School of the Worcester Art Museum (1951-1981) and the Paier College of Art (1982-95). Throughout his career, Graziani also taught part time at Albertus Magnus College, Assumption College, Clark University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Image above used via Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_ewing/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
