Maxine Albro

Maxine Albro
Maxine Albro, photographed by Imogen Cunningham in 1931
Born	(1903-01-20)20 January 1903 Ayrshire, Iowa
Died	19 July 1966(1966-07-19) (aged 63) Los Angeles
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, Mural, Lithography, Mosaic, Sculpture

Maxine Albro (January 20, 1903 Ayrshire, Iowa – July 19, 1966 Los Angeles) was an American painter, muralist, lithographer, mosaic artist, and sculptor. She was one of America's leading female artists, and one of the few women commissioned under the New Deal's Federal Art Project, which also employed the likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.

Maxine Albro was born in 1903 in Ayrshire, Iowa, but grew up in Los Angeles. Her father's family came from England and settled in Rhode Island before moving west, and her mother's ancestors were of Irish-English descent.

In 1920, she moved to San Francisco where she studied at the California School of Fine Arts from 1923 to 1925. A year later, she enrolled in the Art Students League of New York. In 1927, she studied at Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, before embarking to Mexico, where she would make the acquaintance of Diego Rivera.

Albro was one of the few women who were part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, a program initiated under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Due to the high rate of joblessness during the Great Depression, these art programs were required to employ female artists, making this period the first time in history in which women were hired without discrimination in the United States.

Throughout the 1930s, Albro executed many commissions under the federal program, including murals at Coit Tower and a mosaic at San Francisco State University.