Joe (Joseph) Wolins (1915 - 1999) was one of the VERY FEW American WPA artists still alive when we started collecting WPA prints in 1979. (the Works Progress Administration was renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration). The Federal Art Project for which Joe woked was part of the WPA and it became the largest of the New Deal art projects, employing as many as 10,000 artists at one time. We met Joe in 1984 and continued a relationship with him for the next 10 years or so. Every time Ric got to New York there was an invitation for Joe to meet for a very early dinner! Jennie remembers going to dinner with him iat a Chinese restaurant in 1994.
Joe was born in Atlantic City NJ in 1915 and died in New York City in 1999. His first solo exhibit was in 1947. He exhibited his works at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, at the Whitney Museum and at the Smithsonian Institution among others. Recipient of the Mark Rothko Award his work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC and at the Boca Raton Museum in Florida as well as many other venues.
When we met, he was living in a mammoth complex called Westbeth which was a residence for artists on the lower West Side of New York. He showed us a lot of his works and we purchased a few. He had a passion for his work and lots of great stories about the WPA and some of his fellow artists. One of these artists was Jerry Roth (Jerome Henry Rothstein) who also became a dear friend.
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