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leon bibel

leon bibel

leon bibel -lrb- 1913 -- 1995 -rrb- was a polish-born american painter and printmaker during the great depression .
his themes were the social condition of workers and the politics of protest and war , although cityscapes and landscapes were included among his works .
he later developed works in wood of especially jewish themes .
these included fanciful miniature buildings influenced by european spice boxes , figures and objects within shadow boxes , and in one case a synagogue ark .
leon bibel was born in poland , growing up in the shtetl of szczebrzeszyn .
he immigrated to the united states with his family .
after graduating from polytechnic high school in san francisco , he trained at the california school of fine arts and apprenticed under the german impressionist maria riedelstein and assisted bernard zakheim -lrb- a student of diego rivera -rrb- , on the frescoes of the san francisco jewish community center and the university of california at san francisco 's toland hall .
he resided in new york beginning in 1936 as a wpa artist of the federal art project at the harlem community art center in new york city .
he also taught art at both p.s. 94 and bronx house .
at the start of the second world war , he and a number of other new york artists moved to south brunswick , new jersey , to make a living as chicken farmers .
by the 1960s , bibel returned to art , focusing on wood-based sculptures .
he died in 1995 .
he was a friend and neighbor of the american sculptor george segal , and was both an anonymous and named character of segal 's arrays and portraits .
-lrb- he is the first man in `` depression bread line '' , segal 's group of bronzed figures at the fdr memorial , included in pbs 's `` george segal : american still life '' -rrb- .
