Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art [Hardcover]

Southwest Books of the Year Top Pick

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucsons Early Moderns, receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Macs artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.

Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artists letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Macs creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculpturesa diverse body of work never before seen in publicrange from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions. A sharp observer of Indigenous life, she sketched and painted scenes of Navajo (Din?), Hopi, Oodham, and Yaqui people and events. These unique portrayals of the Southwest illustrate this saga of a maverick artist rediscovered.

This richly illustrated book traces the life and career of Mac Schweitzer (1921–1962), once renowned as a mid-twentieth-century painter of southwestern scenes—wildlife, Native American families and craftspeople, landscapes, and semi-abstractions. Six decades after the artist’s death, author Ann Lane Hedlund has rediscovered an artistic legacy full of intriguing stories, successful shows and awards, and a fascinating, diverse body of artwork never before seen in public.Ann Lane Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with Indigenous weavers and other visual artists. She is author ofNavalC}