Sidney van Sheck
Sidney William Jiroušek van Sheck (born July 1, 1899 in Prague, Czechoslovakia; died January 25, 1978) was an artist and aeronautical engineer.
Van Sheck was the son of Alda Jiroušek and Mary van Sheck. He was a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. During World War I, he served in the French Foreign Legion, first with a machine gun unit at Ypres, where he survived a bullet to the leg. After medical treatment he was assigned to an aviation unit and trained as a combat pilot. He was credited with bringing down 17 enemy aircraft. He was shot down by a German ace over the Italian Alps in 1918, injuring his neck.
After the war he studied aeronautical engineering and continued to produce commercial art and designs. He served as an instructor at the Sorbonne, and, after emigrating to the United States in 1923, he worked odd jobs until he joined a crew of theater scenery painters. He eventually landed in Boston with a teaching post at the Massachusetts School of Art in Boston. He married his first wife, the former Mildred Thompson, in New York in December 1929.
Van Sheck moved to Auburn in 1932 where he taught applied arts at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. He came to Birmingham in 1933 and took a job at Bechtel-McCone, helping with wing designs for the B-24 "Liberator" bomber. He opened a studio at 110½ 21st Street North in Birmingham. His painting "Ecce Homo" depicting a dying soldier impaled by barbed wire, which had caused a stir when it was published in Boston, and was later exhibited at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington D.C., was displayed in the window of Loveman, Joseph & Loeb during Armistice Day that November,
Van Sheck designed "Youth's Strife in the Approach to Life's Problems", a large mural in the auditorium at Woodlawn High School in 1934 for the Works Progress Administration. Richard Blauvelt Coe executed the 70-foot wide by 8-foot tall mural between 1937 and 1939.
On June 1, 1934 Van Sheck married the former Mary Frances "Fannie" Holstun of Chambers County in Birmingham. James Bryan performed the ceremony. His first wife, Mildred, subsequently filed a suit for divorce, citing "indignities", in Pulaski, Arkansas in 1936. There were no children from that marriage and no alimony awarded.
Also in 1934, he entered a competition sponsored by the Arkansas American Legion to design a mural for the interior of the capitol in Little Rock, which would be funded by the Public Works Administration. His design featured a monumental allegorical female figure of Peace, holding a child's hand and unfurling a rainbow-tinted veil. In the background a god of war defends his hoard of money bags with soldiers to whom he offers laurels. The words "Blessed are they who seek peace for guidance toward purposeful life" spread across the width of the panel.
In 1935 Van Sheck wrote to the director of the Works Progress Administration objecting, on artistic grounds, to the proposal to display the Vulcan statue at a new park on the ridge of Red Mountain. Before the end of that year he had relocated to Yakima, Washington, but returned to Birmingham before 1942 and was employed by the Republic Steel Corporation.
On August 20, 1947 Van Sheck was married again, to a former art student named Clara Grace "Babe" Wood of Atlanta, Georgia. The couple still resided in Birmingham, at an apartment at 1419 25th Street North in Druid Hills, in 1949, but by 1950 he was living in Fort Worth, Texas, and later settled in Pacific Palisades, California where he worked with the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, contributing his skills to the B-29 "Superfortress" bomber, the Spruce Goose and other projects.
Grace Van Sheck died in 1972 in Costa Mesa, California. Van Sheck died on January 25, 1978 and is buried alongside Grace at Eason Cemetery in South Fulton, Georgia.
References
- Giddens, Lucia (October 13, 1933) "Birmingham To See Painting Which Raised Storm Of Patriotic Protest." The Birmingham Post, p. 2
- Giddens, Lucia (April 6, 1934) "Soldier-Painter Chooses Canvas As Medium For Spreading Gospel Of Peace." The Birmingham Post, p. 4
- "Artists Say Mean Things About Vulcan In Fighting Removal To City's Skyline." (August 10, 1935) The Birmingham Post
- "Vulcan Flayed As 'Nuisance'." The Birmingham Post, p. 8
- McGlauflin, Alice, editor. (1940) Who's Who in American Art: A Biographical Directory of Selected Artists in the United States Working in the Media of Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Arts, Illustration, Design, and Handicrafts. Washington D. C.: American Federation of Arts
External links
- Sidney William Van Sheck at Findagrave.com