Boats on the Shore

Offset print on paper, signed in pencil.

A painter, muralist and political activist, Joe Jones was associated with the American Regionalist movement and for some time worked closely with Thomas Hart Benton. An avowed Communist in his early life, he became enamoured of capitalist opportunities in the late 1940s. At that time, he began working for corporations including Standard Oil and Abbott Laboratories producing works for their Annual Reports and advertising in a minimalist and non-representational style.

Jones was basically self taught as an artist, and at the age of 22 in 1931, began earning awards. In 1935, he held his first exhibition in New York. In 1937, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship and subsequently prizes from the Pennsylvania and National Academies.

His works are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, White House and many other regional museums of national repute.

Jones is listed in:
Falk, Peter Hastings (ed). Who Was Who in American Art. Connecticut: Sound View Press, 1999.

Image size: 12.375” x 18.375
Frame size: 19.25” x 25”