Fletcher Martin. was an American muralist, illustrator, and painter born in Palisade, Colorado in 1907. The high school dropout was a self taught artist inspired by circus posters. His resume included working for a company called the Western Show Print at age 13. There he made posters for the outdoors. Also included in his resume was working as a lumberjack and a professional boxer who also served in the Navy from 1922 to 1926. He traveled and lived in various places in the US and ended up settling in Los Angeles working for the Earl Hays printers. His artwork tended to depict real-life subjects and topics. He won many awards for his work, including the Altman Prize of the National Academy of Design in 1949, the Walter Lippincott Prize for figure painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the 1955 Gold Medal from the New York Art Directors Club. Martin died in New York in 1979 at age 72.
The Artist:
“As the "Last Hired and the First-Fired," African Americans entered the Depression long before the stock market crash in 1929…” -U.S. History in Context.