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Summary
Laura Slobe (1909-1958)
Venus, c. 1940
painted plaster
Illinois State Museum, 1967.26.50, Gift of Louis Cheskin
Laura Slobe was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1909 and moved to Chicago with her family. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and exhibited regularly around the city. In 1939, she enrolled in the Federal Art Program, the government-sponsored relief program during the Great Depression, where she created sculptures and taught art classes. Slobe moved to New York in the late 1940s and worked as the staff artist of The Militant, a left-leaning newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party. She is best known for her political cartoons drawn under the name Laura Gray.
Slobes small sculpture titled Venus brings an ancient theme up to date. Venus was the Roman goddess of love and sensuality. In the Classical world, she is often depicted as a young woman, elegantly standing, dressed in flowing, often revealing fabric. This association would carry on in art history for centuries. Slobe’s vision of Venus is of a woman rendered through the lens of modernity of her time. She streamlined the form, reducing details to a few incised lines and angular forms.
Item Duration at Mansion
Temporary