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E. Dewey Albinson -- Northern Minnesota Mine (1934):
A vast open-pit iron mine dominates this painting as iron mining dominated northern Minnesota. As steam shovels dug out the ore and trains carried it away, the oval excavations hungrily ate away the land. Artist Dewey Albinson showed houses and gardens suspended precariously above the edge of a widening pit. The wearily stooping miners in the foreground have finished their shift and wait for a train home while a new shift works the mine. Albinson shows the mine in operation, but work was not always steady during the early days of the Great Depression. One Minnesota iron miner recalled his week's workdays declining from six to four or less; then in 1932 he had no work at all for six months.
Albinson, a native of Minnesota, knew the iron mines of northern Minnesota's Mesabi Range well; in 1932 one of the big mining companies had hired him to paint local scenes. Including the Spruce and Mesabi Mountain mines. In his PWAP painting, Albinson took evident delight in the characteristic rusty orange of the iron-laden soil, playing it against a pale blue sky, green bushes, and a vivid turquoise shed. |