Edaville Cranberry Plantation, South Carver, Massachusetts

Edaville Cranberry Plantation, South Carver, Massachusetts

Alois, Jr. Fabry

24 x 30 inches

121

Alois Fabry, an artist, a teacher and an author, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. He was 74 years old and lived in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Mr. Fabry, primarily a watercolorist of seascapes and landscapes, exibited widely on the East Coast. In addition to being exhibited in one-man shows, his work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Yale and Harvard Universities, and at the Silvermine Guild of Artists. He was also a contributing artist to The New Yorker, where his drawings appeared regularly over the last 40 years.
Early in his career, during the Depression, Mr. Fabry painted two of the largest murals commissioned for the Works Progress Administration. Painted on the rotunda of Brooklyn Borough Hall, the murals covered 1,900 square feet and became the subject of controversy. Like other Federal Arts Project commissions, they were attacked for their progressive style and social content. Neo-Primitive Style
Because of his neo-primitive style, which for the most part eschewed perspective, the paintings faced critcism almost from the start. They were completed in 1939, but in 1945, at the behest of Mayor La Guardia, they were taken down.
Mr. Fabry was born in Manhattan and was a 1936 graduate of the Yale University School of Fine Arts. He became the director of the mural-painting department of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and taught at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute. From 1956 to 1971 he was the director of art for the New Canaan school system. He wrote three books on art.
He is survived by his wife, the former Sally Sawyer; two sons, Peter, of Manhattan, and James, of Westport, Conn.; a daughter, Martha Pearce of London, and two grandchildren.

WSPAC - Ford Times Collection

Watercolor

Transparent watercolor

Signed, lower right

Ford Motor Company