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| Olinka Hrdy |
Olinka Hrdy exemplifies the female artist who was not only well-known during her lifetime, but worked extensively and was respected by major artists and architects of the day. She was a risk-taker and an artist who worked in a genre that was not mainstream in her native Oklahoma. Hrdy's star has, unfortunately, faded into near obscurity.
Olinka Hrdy is one of Oklahoma's
first modern artists. She was born in 1902 near a
small Czechoslovakian settlement in Prague, Oklahoma, fifty-three miles east
of Oklahoma City. She considered herself a 'soddy,' that is one who was
born and grew up in a sod house, a successor to the log cabin found during frontier
settlement in Canada and the United States. Olinka, Czech for "Olive," was of Czechoslovakian
descent. After her parents divorced, she and her mother worked a large Indian
lease which is land owned by Native Americans but leased to whites for
agriculture. They tilled several hundred acres on their own. She remained there until she left to attend the University of Oklahoma.
Hrdy was a talented crafts woman and earned additional money throughout high school doing embroidery, a traditional Czech art. With only fifty dollars to see her through the entirety of her schooling at the University of Oklahoma, she originally enrolled in the domestic art department, but within weeks was doing so well that she was made a student instructor. Since Hrdy became bored in a craft with which she already excelled, she decided to enroll in the art department the following year. When her instructors found that she had no funds to buy supplies or clothing and recognizing her talent, they arranged for her to work on a mural in one of their offices based on a poem entitled, "Maker of Dreams."
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| Olinka Hrdy Development of the Body Mural Oklahoma City University Law School South Wall |
Although Hrdy wanted to continue her studies, lack of money was a critical
issue. Befriended by the faculty, another of her professors arranged again for
her to work on painting a series of twenty doors measuring two by sixteen feet
at the state dormitories for women at the campus of the university
which covered her room and board for the year. The doors were eventually
removed and relocated to a museum in Tulsa Oklahoma.
Hrdy produced murals for architect Bruce Goff's Riverside Studio in Tulsa. Goff designed the studio for his music teacher and commissioned Hrdy, a student at the University of Oklahoma,to create murals for the walls. The murals signified various forms of music: primitive, vocal, piano, symphonic, choral, string, and modern. Five feet wide and 13 feet long, the paintings decorated the studio’s recital hall, situated above the air vents and running the length of the wall until they met the ceiling. As you can see from the above image, the murals were an experiment in composition and color.
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| Olinka Hrdy Painting a mural in Goff's Studio Tulsa, Oklahoma |
Architect and artist
Frank Lloyd Wright was also a fan of her work and he invited her to paint
murals in Taliesin East in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
A prolific artist from the 1920s to the 1960s, Hrdy is not particularly well-known in the art world today. Few of her sketches, small paintings, and graphic design work remain, and most are held in collections by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma. Olinka Hrdy enjoyed a few years of acclaim before fading her renown faded. She worked as an industrial designer after World War II, diagramming blueprints for radios and radio cabinets, waste baskets, clothes hampers, and even the interior of a private airplane, but she has received little historical recognition for her work. A retrospective of her work was mounted three years ago at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum in Norman which exposed new generations to the beauty of her style.
A prolific artist from the 1920s to the 1960s, Hrdy is not particularly well-known in the art world today. Few of her sketches, small paintings, and graphic design work remain, and most are held in collections by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma. Olinka Hrdy enjoyed a few years of acclaim before fading her renown faded. She worked as an industrial designer after World War II, diagramming blueprints for radios and radio cabinets, waste baskets, clothes hampers, and even the interior of a private airplane, but she has received little historical recognition for her work. A retrospective of her work was mounted three years ago at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum in Norman which exposed new generations to the beauty of her style.
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| Catalogue for Hrdy Oklahoma Moderne Exhibition Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art ca. 2013 University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma |
In addition, Hrdy didn’t sell much work during her lifetime. The market
in which she worked didn’t support her style of art, and much of it was considered decoration, rather
than fine art. Her gender and being from Oklahoma also seemed to create obstacles in her work. Hrdy and Goff collaborated again in 1930 when Goff was asked to redesign the
interior Tulsa’s unattractive and outdated Convention Hall—the historic structure now
known as the Brady Theater. Goff asked Hrdy to design a 50-foot long asbestos
fire curtain for the stage and a mural for the entrance. Both of these works
have either disappeared or been destroyed, but, at the time, they solidified
Hrdy’s understanding of abstraction and her position as a modern artist.
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| Olinka Hrdy Good Earth ca. 1938 Lithograph 11 3/4 x 16.5 inches Illinois State Museum Collection |
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| Olinka HrdyDevelopment of the Mind Mural Oklahoma City University Law School North Wall |
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| Olinka Hrdy Deep Sea Magic ca. 1939 Mural Long Beach School District |
