Mabel Dwight
Birth Date: January 31, 1875
Death Date: September 4, 1955
Artist Gallery
Mabel Dwight was known for her keen observation of the absurdity of the human condition; she is best known for her lightly satirical depictions of life in New York City and has been called “the Master of the Comedie Humaine”. Born in Cincinnati, raised in New Orleans, and studied art in San Francisco at the Hopkins Art School. Dwight’s work gives no indication of that influence. Instead, she became a socialist and full of religious fervor, ever championing the underdog in society. Social Realism is a form of naturalistic realism focusing specifically on social problems and the hardships of everyday life. The term most commonly refers to the urban American Scene artist of the Depression era, who were greatly influenced by the Ashcan School of the early 20th century. Dwight captured the tragic and comic side of people living in cities, many of them on velvety lithographs where she used a crayon technique to create white shapes against dark backgrounds-parodies of the human situations. Dwight believed that poverty was the great disease.