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A
colleague of Grant Wood and founder of the art department at Coe
College, Marvin Cone is a renowned artist and painter in his own right.
Marvin
Cone was born in Cedar Rapids and graduated from Washington High
School, then Coe College, and finally the Art Institute in Chicago.
Cone
returned to his alma mater in 1919 to begin his teaching career in the
foreign language department. While teaching French, he gradually
developed the college's art department until he was devoting all his
time to teaching art. Even after his retirement in 1960, Marvin Cone
stayed on at Coe College for three years as an artist-in-residence.
Cone's
interest in Iowa and Cedar Rapids art dated back to when he was a
student at Washington High and he and his good friend, Grant Wood,
worked as teenage volunteers for the Cedar Rapids Art Association. The
two helped pack and unpack exhibits, swept floors, and spent many
nights on cots in the art center, fulfilling insurance company
requirements for the security for the exhibitions.
Marvin
Cone and Grant Wood spent a year together in Paris, painting things
typically French, and following the impressionistic pattern of the day.
When they returned to Iowa, they dropped the French influence and began
painting Iowa as they saw it.
The
swing to regional art during the Depression years put Wood and Cone out
front as leading interpreters of the Iowa and Midwest scene. And Marvin
Cone, who always painted what he liked, the way he liked, grew famous
with his clown series, his red barns, his haunted houses and doors.
Later he concentrated on abstractions.
At
one time or another, his work has been exhibited in every major U. S.
gallery and many of his paintings are part of this country's most
important permanent collections.
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