Mitchell Siporin


Mitchell Siporin was a Social Realist American painter.

Biography

Mitchell Siporin was born in New York City to Hyman, a truck driver, and Jennie Siporin, both immigrants from Poland, and grew up in Chicago. He did illustrations for Esquire and other magazines. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Siporin worked as a painter for the Illinois Art Project through the Works Progress Administration. Together with Edward Millman, he painted "the largest single mural project awarded for a post office by the Section of Fine Arts" in the Central Post Office in St Louis, Missouri.
In late 1943 he was deployed as a sergeant in the Army Artist Unit, where he served alongside Rudolph von Ripper. He sent back drawings and watercolours from North Africa and Italy.
He married Miriam Tane in Manhattan to November 9, 1945. In 1949, he won the Prix de Rome in painting.
In 1951, he founded the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. In 1956, he became the first curator of the Brandeis University Art Collection.
He was Jewish.

Works

Additional works by Siporin can be found in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Albert G. Lane Technical High School in Chicago.
In 1947 his painting End of an Era won the Logan Medal of the Arts at the 51st Annual Exhibition in Chicago.