Boogie Woogie, 1940, by Mildred Rackley (1906-1992), color screenprint, 14 ½” x 10 ½”, plus full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 73 in an edition of 86 in pencil, lower margin. An excellent impression. Asking $3,000, please contact us here or email us at info@fuscofour.com. This work has not surfaced in almost 20 years, and was included in a 1940 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. It is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/46380
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Rackley had an amazing artistic career and political life. She was born in New Mexico, graduated from the University of Texas in 1930, and traveled to Europe to study painting. She was exhibited widely in the 1930s and 1940s and was a member of the Nat'l Serigraph Society and the Princeton Print Club. In addition to the Museum of Modern Art, her exhibitions included: Nicholson Gallery (Pasadena), 1931, 1934; AFA, 1932; Laguna Beach, California AA, 1946; and Carnegie Inst., 1948.
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In 1930 she attended the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Hamburg, Germany, but when Adolf Hitler rose to power she moved to the Spanish island of Mallorca. In 1935 Rackley returned to America where she joined the American Communist Party. In 1936 she was recruited by the American Medical Bureau and later that year traveled to Spain where in 1937 she helped organize the first American hospital for volunteers fighting in the Spanish Civil War. On her return to the US she became editor of Flight, the magazine of the League Against War and Fascism.
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During the Second World War she worked in a California shipyard where she was an active union organizer. By 1947 her married name was Simon and she had settled in Oakland, CA. She died in nearby Lafayette, California on Nov. 19, 1992.
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Sources: Source: Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940, and Who's Who in American Art 1947-62
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