Tom Lea

Tom Lea (1907–2001) was an El Paso painter, muralist, illustrator, and novelist whose long career placed him at the intersection of Texas art, American literature, and twentieth-century history. Born in El Paso and educated partly in Chicago and abroad, he returned to his border city and made it the base of a creative life of extraordinary breadth and ambition, producing work that documented the human experience of the American Southwest and the Second World War with equal skill and moral seriousness. His murals — produced for the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts during the New Deal era — can be found in post offices and federal buildings across the Southwest and beyond, making him one of the most visible public artists of his generation. His border landscapes, portraits of El Paso life, and studies of the cattle trade captured the distinct character of the Trans-Pecos region with a naturalism and affection that still feel fresh. During World War II, Lea served as a war correspondent for LIFE magazine, producing paintings of combat in the Pacific theater that are considered among the most honest and harrowing visual documents of the war. His painting "The Price" — depicting a Marine in shock at the battle of Peleliu — is one of the most famous American war images of the twentieth century. His novel "The Brave Bulls" (1949) became a bestseller and was adapted into a film. Lea spent the last decades of his long life in El Paso, painting the landscape he loved and receiving the many honors that accumulated around his extraordinary body of work. The Tom Lea Institute in El Paso preserves his legacy and archives, and his murals in the federal building there remain among the finest examples of New Deal public art in Texas.