Frank Mechau’s Stallion and Mares
The University of Denver is proud to have acquired Stallion and Mares by celebrated Colorado artist Frank Mechau (1904–1946). The painting is a synthesis of Mechau’s early and mature styles and likely dates from a moment of stylistic transition in the mid-late 1930s. Notably, the University Art Collections also holds a preparatory sketch for this painting, generously donated by barrier-breaking journalist Bill Hosokawa in 1993.
Colorado artist Frank Mechau (pronounced may-show) was an American painter and muralist who championed the American West as a subject for modern American art. Born in Kansas in 1904, he grew up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and briefly attended the University of Denver from 1923-24 before moving east to New York and then Paris. He returned to Colorado at the height of the Great Depression in 1932 and quickly rose to national prominence. Mechau received a dozen mural commissions through the New Deal’s public art programs, three prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships, and showed his work at major exhibitions across the country. He had a lifelong love affair with Colorado’s Western Slope and made his family home and studio in the tiny mountain town of Redstone, Colorado. Mechau went on to teach at Columbia University in New York City and spent World War II traveling in the Caribbean and South America, painting for the U.S. War Unit. Mechau continued to work in Colorado until he passed away in Denver in 1946 at the age of 42. During his life he was celebrated by major figures in the American art world for his murals and the unique, modern style he used to represent the American West.
A constant throughout Mechau’s work is his exquisite ability to render horses. Twisting, curving, braying, bucking, racing, drinking, and bowing, the horses here demonstrate a diversity of forms and movements. His early works, like Horses at Night (1934), are defined by bold, simplified forms. Thickly painted with rich, saturated colors, the horses – lacking facial features and ears – run in a frenzy of energy. In his later paintings, however, this cubist-inspired abstraction gives way to increased naturalism and attention to detail. Mature works like Tom Kenney Comes Home (1944)are painted in a more delicate and sensitive style. The artist has painstakingly delineated each hair in the horses’ manes and tails and detailed the gear they pack. Mechau’s use of line in this work is finer and more confident. While many American artists moved from naturalism towards abstraction during the first half of the twentieth century, Mechau’s art, by contrast, moved in the other direction.
Stallion and Mares is a significant work in Mechau’s oeuvre, as it includes elements of the artist’s early style informed by abstraction and cubism as well as the increased naturalism that would come to characterize his mature artworks. The painting encapsulates a moment of transition and stylistic development in Mechau’s career, allowing us to date it to the mid-late 1930s. The horses in Stallion and Mares are finely depicted, as seen through the inclusion of facial features and the delicate rendering of their manes and hooves. Upon close examination, the artist’s pencil and grid lines are visible through the thin, nearly translucent paint. The work has a green undertone, similar to Tom Kenney, a signal of Mechau’sshift away from the vibrant colors of his earlier years towards softer, more neutral colors. Stallion and Mares features a teal sky like Horses at Night, but the artist has abandoned the flat horizon line, opting instead to introduce a mountain landscape. Mechau includes vibrant, red flora, particularly in the bottom right corner, which continue to appear in his later artworks like Dorik and His Colt and Tom Kenney Comes Home. The addition of these small details adds a layer of intimacy and tender care for the landscape.
The University is pleased to reunite the painting with its preparatory sketch, which has been in the University Art Collections since 1993. Rendered in pencil and oil on Masonite board, the sketch is in black and white. In contrast to the shading of the background, the outlines of the horses are heavy, strong, and boldly defining the white/uncolored horses. The line exudes a sense of confidence and mastery. With no mountains or horizon line, the composition focuses all attention on the figures of the animals, their movement, and how they work together visually as a group. In shifting from the sketch to the painting, Mechau added a horse to the top left of the painting and enhanced the diversity of the horses through color and patterning. The result is much closer to Horses at Night, with each horse having its own unique appearance, posture, and personality.
The sketch was a gift to the University from William “Bill” Kunpei Hosokawa (1915–2007), who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and studied journalism in the 1930s. Facing discriminatory and racist hiring practices, he remained committed to a news career. In 1942, Executive Order 9066 forced people of Japanese descent into internment camps throughout the American West. Hosokawa was sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. Frank Mechau’s brother Vaughn, also a journalist, was the Reports Officer for the Center. Vaughn and Hosokawa joined forces to publish an internal newspaper, the Heart Mountain Sentinel. Hosokawa later recalled:
“One of the first Caucasians I met at the camp was a fellow named Vaughn Mechau, M-e-c-h-a-u. He was a reports officer, former newspaperman, and he and I hit it off very quickly. And when he became aware of my background, he asked me if I would go to work for the, his reports department. And one of the functions of the reports department was to publish a newspaper. That seems to be a contradiction in terms, a newspaper in a concentration camp. But he asked me if I would take the job as, as editor.
“I had been afraid in Puyallup, Camp Harmony, that since I was being blackballed, I would not be given any assignment of any consequence in the new camp. And I didn’t want to be washing dishes or whatever. And so I was very pleased when Mechau said, “We want to use your experience as a newspaperman to start a newspaper.” And we had many conversations. How do you publish a free newspaper in a concentration camp? And we knew that we had to tread a narrow line between asserting ourselves, like I had in the PC columns, and not riling up the people to the point where there would be revolts. So that was the job I had.“[1]
Vaughn worked for several Colorado newspapers, including the Denver Post, and after the War hired Hosokawa as an editor. Hosokawa stayed at the Denver Post for the next 38 years. In addition to his career as a journalist and editor, Hosokawa was a lifelong activist and advocate for Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, opening his home to those in need, finding them jobs, and serving as the Honorary Consul General of Japan for Colorado from 1976 until 1999. He also published several books uncovering the history of Japanese in the American West and sharing the stories of Japanese Americans, including his own experiences of life at Heart Mountain. Vaughn Mechau and Hosokawa remained friends and colleagues, and Vaughn gave the sketch to Hosokawa who generously gifted it to the University in 1993.
Photography by Tom Parker, War Relocation Authority. National Archives and Records Administration. NAID: 537. Series: Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, compiled 1942 – 1945 (National Archives Identifier: 536000). NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-210-G-E649.
The painting and sketch offer a unique glimpse into Mechau’s artistic process and provide a snapshot of his stylistic development in the late 1930s. With elements of his early affinity for abstraction and modernism as well as hints of his later leanings towards increased naturalism and detail, these artworks reveal Mechau’s artistic range and exploration. Works by Mechau are rare given his early death, and both of these compositions encapsulate the arc of Mechau’s career.
The painting and study for Stallion and Mares are on display in Shwayder Art Building.
[1] Bill Hosokawa. Bill Hosokawa Interview with Alice Ito and Daryl Maeda, Seattle, WA, July 13, 2001. Densho Digital Archive, Densho Visual History Collection. Denshovh-hbill-01-0017. Accessed 12 March 2024. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/media/encyc-psms/en-denshovh-hbill-01-0017-1.htm