Viewing page 13 of 35

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Interview with Hale A. Woodruff
November 2, 1968
New York, New York 

Q: What would you call the style of painting that you used in the "Amistad" murals?

A: I tried to use a style which was in keeping with the event, that is, the mutiny itself.  It is true, also that I had just returned from Mexico where I had worked with Diego Rivera and there may be some of his influence there, but not a great deal. It was sort of a realistic style that I was trying to get but one that would dramatize the event. 

Q: How would you contrast that with the prints such as "Returning Home" and "Sunday Afternoon Promenade"? That would be the same period, wouldn't it?

A: Yes. The prints, however, are more an interpretation of life around the community, not that they were fold art or anything of the kind, but I did not try for the epic quality of the "Amistad" murals. 

Q: Something like the "Card Players" - were you influenced at all by cubism there?

A: Yes. That was done when I was a student in Paris in the 1920's. All the artists who contributed to the development of the so called modern movement of that period were very influential on many of us.  Picasso, certainly, the sculptors - Brancusi - a whole crowd combined to influence one and it was my first opportunity to break away from the rather academic training that I had had in the states.