1904-1981
Theme/Style – Landscapes, still lifes, Abstraction
Media – Oils, murals, watercolors, serigraphs
Artistic Focus – Credited with being the first to use silk screening as a medium for creating art prints, Guy MacCoy is thought of as largely responsible for the eminence screen printing holds as an art form today.
Career Highlights –
- Guy Crittington MacCoy was born in Valley Falls, Kansas, in 1904. He began his art studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and continued with Ernest Lawson in Colorado Springs.
- Upon moving to New York City he studied at the Art Students’ League and at Columbia University, and also with Thomas Hart Benton. It was in New York City that MacCoy first began producing silkscreen prints in 1932 with his wife, Geno Pettit.
- During the Depression years MacCoy enrolled as a muralist in the Federal Art Project and created murals for the Girls’ Industrial School in Brooklyn, as well as the Brooklyn Museum.
- MacCoy moved to Los Angeles in 1947, where he and his wife co-founded the Western Serigraph Society of which MacCoy was the first president.
- MacCoy taught at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles where he worked with Rico LeBrun for several years, after which Millard Sheets, who was then director of Otis Art Institute, persuaded MacCoy to teach at Otis where he remained for eleven years before retiring in 1965. Guy MacCoy died in Los Angeles in 1981.
Selection of Works by this Artist
Melon with Apples
Bibliographic references are available upon request.