Born in El Paso, Texas, Tom Lea was a 20th-century genius with extraordinary gifts as a muralist, illustrator, war correspondent, portraitist, landscape artist, novelist, and historian. His murals, dating from the 1930s, depict the history and character of distinct regions of the United States and can be found on the walls of public buildings from Washington, D.C., to El Paso, Texas.

 

From 1941 to 1946, Tom Lea was a war artist correspondent for Life magazine. He traveled over 100,000 miles to theaters of war where American forces engaged, including the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, aboard the USS Hornet, a trip to China where he met Theodore H. White, and landing with the Seventh Marines on Peleliu.

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“The next four years were a huge break from work in my cherished homeland. I became, for deeply felt reasons, an eye-witness reporter, in drawings and paintings,

of men and their machines waging war worldwide.

I want to make it clear that I did not report hearsay; I did not imagine, or fake, or improvise; I did not cuddle up with personal emotion, moral notion, or political opinion

about War with a capital-W. I reported what I saw with my own two eyes, wide open, in pictures.

​Doing it that way I traveled more than a hundred thousand miles outside the United States, north and south of the Equator, east and west of the International Date Line,

in lights and shadows as shaky as the Aurora weaving mysteries over the empty Ice Cap of Greenland, or a shine of parachute flare bringing night-time flash

of gunfire from black jungle on a coral island.

In those years, 1941–1945, I saw, and I drew, and I painted, many kinds of things, many men, in many situations, in many places.

To this day, you see a man here who is proud- exceedingly proud – that he went out and saw it, and came back home bringing a legible, trustworthy record of what he saw.

And to this day, you see a man here who is grateful – humbly grateful – that he got home with his hide intact.”

- Tom Lea

 

Explore the Tom Lea Trail : https://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-US/guide/theTomLeaInstitute/exhibition/c4049f39-2a72-44ce-9c0d-26c713565a93

 

Learn more about the Tom Lea Institute, including their FREE events, exhibitions, and Tours:  https://www.tomlea.com/