Mary Fife Laning

Mary Fife Laning was a prolific American painter, muralist and printmaker. She contributed to the iconic American style developed by the Fourteenth Street School of New York in the 1930s. She exhibited widely in America's most prominent art museums during the early years of their establishment and throughout the rest of her career. Like her male colleagues, she explored social realist subject matter based on the city life of New York using fluid lines and robust brushstrokes. Her work approached these subjects from a humanizing, feminist perspective.

Because of her status as a woman and wife to painter Edward Laning, her career was often overshadowed and under-collected. Yet today her work stands as evidence of her strength, independence, and dedication to her practice, while providing a powerful reflection of New York life in the mid-20th century. 

After graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1923 with a bachelor's of art degree, Fife went on to attend Cooper Union from 1925-1927, where she earned an award for best mural painting in 1926. She studied art at the Académie Russe in Paris and enrolled in the Art Students League of New York upon her return. She became involved with the Fourteenth Street School, a group of artists focused on the depiction of modern working-class life around the Union Square area of New York City. Fife formed a friendship with female painter Isabel Bishop, who encouraged her to focus on the experience of working women. Fife also met fellow muralist Edward Laning, whom she married in 1933. 

From 1936-1937, Fife executed a Works Progress Administration-sponsored ceiling fresco in the U.S. Customs House alongside painter Reginald Marsh. In 1944, she took a position teaching first-year drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design, while her husband headed the Painting Department. During her time in Kansas City, Mary Fife exhibited in regional competitions and hosted her own solo show at the Women's City Club.

From 1950-1952, Fife traveled to Italy with her husband for the duration of his Fulbright Fellowship. After leaving the Art Institute and moving back to New York, she became head of the Art Department at the Birch-Wathen School in 1961.

Mary Fife was awarded several prestigious honors in the 1960s. Her awards included the National Association of Women Artists' Lillian Cotton Award in 1966, the National Academy of Design Figure Prize in 1967, and the Pen + Brush Prize in 1969.

Fife was influentially active in the arts community through her involvement with the National Association of Women Artists and Pen + Brush Inc. She also exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Butler Institute of American Art. Mary Fife Laning died in 1990, and since then her work has appeared in several prestigious exhibitions.