Winnifred Cone Gallery

The artist with the longest and strongest ties to Coe is Marvin Cone, and it is his art that greets you at the main entrance of the building. Here, in a gallery that flanks the entry hall and is named for Cone's widow, Winnifred, you will find 56 paintings and drawings by a man who graduated from Coe in 1914 and taught at the school most of his life. Cone, who died in 1965, taught French from 1920-34 before founding the art department in 1934. He taught there until his retirement in 1960 and later served as artist-in-residence.

Marvin Cone, Stone Fruit

Twenty-six of the Cone paintings, forming the nucleus of the present collection, were hand-picked by the artist as representative of the best of his various "periods." Here are the early colorful Iowa landscapes and barns, the Impressionist Parisian scenes (Cone and his friend Grant Wood spent time together in Europe during the 1920s), the billowing cloud paintings, his vivid depictions of carnival life, the enigmatic room paintings, and, lastly, the abstract works that marked the end of his long career.

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