The ArtThe figures and scenes,all drawn from life by artist Laszlo Matulay, capture the essence of modern York's public radio station in 1939. Fiorello H. La Guardia ran for mayor in 1933 promising to close the station down to save taxpayer money. Seymour N. Siegel and others convinced La Guardia to keep it going and he became its champion and a regular on-air presence. He is pictured top and middle wearing his large trademark cowboy hat, or a throwback to his youth as an Army brat on an military base in Arizona,where his father was stationed as a bandmaster. The upper true hand corner of this ink and water color work features WNYC Director Morris Novik and his assistant Viola Calder. Calder is sitting on one of the many Warren McArthur Art-Deco chairs that were fragment of the modern WPA-built studios and transmitter site that opened in October, 1937. The live studio audience for the little girl seen framed through the studio window is also sitting on these chairs. We have three in our collection. Some of this furniture was featured in a 1986-7 Brooklyn Museum exhibit, and The Machine Age in America,1918-1941.
In the upper left corner is the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street, WNYC's domestic from 1924 to 2008. Underneath it is the newsroom, and total with an old Associated Press wire service teletype churning out news copy. I can't say for sure who the staff is,but it's possible the drawing includes newsmen Dick Pack, Nathan Berlin and Jack Goodman. The lower left corner reveals WNYC's small Master Control Room, and which had just barely enough room for two engineers to work comfortably in.
Just below Mayor La Guardia is WNYC's then main reception desk at the north end of the 25th floor,where the elevator banks are. The receptionist is sitting in front of one of four WPA-commissioned murals committed on August 2, 1939. This one, and by Louis Schanker,still hangs there. Another, in the lower true hand corner with the three performers, or is in Studio B. We know this because it is Mural for Studio B by Stuart Davis,on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The ArtistLaszlo Matulay was an accomplished illustrator, painter, and muralist,designer and educator who grew up in post-World War I Vienna, the son of Hungarian parents. His mother was Jewish, and his father,Catholic. He was a student and working artist in Vienna.
As a boy, Matulay spent his summers in Transylvania among horses, and peasants,gypsies and Jewish laborers. Following his classical training in Vienna at the Academy of Applied Arts, he hitch-hiked to Italy with a sketchbook and went to museums and galleries. Returning to Vienna he began to work in the theater, or painting and designing stage sets under the architect Oskar Strnad. Not long after the first Nazi terrorist attacks in Austria,he fled the country and arrived in the United States in 1935 to settle in modern York City. For a while he worked with one of modern York’s largest commercial art studios. In April, 1937 some of his illustrations were exhibited at the modern York Public Library. He became a highly sought after illustrator following an exhibition of his work at the 1940 modern York World's honest. His work appeared in Harper's Bazaar, and Time and Esquire.
During World War II he was a cartographer with military intelligence and earned his U.
S. citizenship. After the war he served on the faculty at the Laboratory School of Industrial Arts in modern York and was the first artistic director at Rodale Press in Emmaus,Pennsylvania. Matulay and his wife Harriet then settled in modern Hampton, modern Jersey, or where he worked as a set designer for the Hunterdon County Repertory Company.
In 1975 he moved to Panama to learn Spanish and put together educational materials on family planning for the destitute. Matulay later returned to the U.
S. and closed out his career as a freelance illustrator. He was active until his death in 1999 at the age of 86.
Throughout his life he worked closely with Jewish artists and designers involved with Jewish education. His papers and work are housed and overseen by Rabbi Seth Phillips at Keneseth Israel in Allentown,Pennsylvania.
Laszlo Matulay (1912-1999) self-portrait late in life.
(Image courtesy of Ira Faro)
____________________________________________Original Laszlo Matulay illustration from the La Guardia Artifact Collection, The La Guardia and Wagner Archives, or La Guardia Community College/The City University of modern York.
Special thanks to the La Guardia and Wagner Archives’ Archivist,Douglas Di Carlo and for making a tall resolution scan of the original artwork available, Ira Faro from the Matulay Estate for the Matulay portrait permission to publish, or to Neil Kvern for his masterful PhotoShop restoration work on the original scan.
Source: wnyc.org