Fred Geary

Fred Geary was born on May 19, 1894, in Clarence, Missouri. He grew up in Carrollton, Missouri, and showed an interest in art at an early age. He was the art editor of his high school yearbook, The Nautilus, at Carrollton High School. After high school, Geary studied at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. He then studied at the Kansas City Art Institute under Charles A. Wilimovsky, and the Art Students League in New York City with George Bridgeman.

Around 1917, Geary returned to Missouri and was employed as a designer with the Fred Harvey Company. The company had offices in Union Station, where Geary’s studio was located. He designed a variety of objects, including menu cards, tourist booklets, postcards and murals. His murals included one for the El Navajo Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. Geary also created pictographs for the interior of the second and third floors of the Desert View Watchtower, at Grand Canyon National Park. This tower was built by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad. The tower was designed by architect Mary Colter; the murals on the first floor were painted by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie. Geary worked for the company until 1946.

While Geary was employed in Kansas City, he maintained a home in Carrollton. There he began making woodcuts at the age of thirty-five. He was part of the woodcut revival of the 1920s and 1930s, and his work is in a regionalist style. Many of his subjects depicted rural life in Missouri and in the Southwest.

Geary belonged to several artist organizations, such as the Woodcut Society, the Prairie Print Makers, Southern Printmakers, Southern States Art League, and the Kansas City Society of Artists, where he was the first vice president in 1934 and treasurer in 1933. 

In 1939, Geary served as a member of the regional jury for selecting graphic art for the New York World’s Fair. 

Fred Geary died on October 13, 1946, in Carrollton.