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Arnold Pyle (1908-1973) - faculty

A lifelong resident of Cedar Rapids, Pyle was both a recognized painter and teacher. His eighth grade art teacher at McKinley High School, Grant Wood, would become his mentor and a longtime friend. After graduating from high school in 1927, Pyle became Wood’s studio assistant. His formal art instruction came from apprenticing with Wood, Marvin Cone, and Adrian Dornbush. By his mid-20’s, he was exhibiting widely, writing art reviews for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and winning major art prizes.

He assisted Edward Rowan at the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids for five years and played a major role in notable Grant Wood projects. The two paired to design and install the stained glass Veterans Memorial Window, located in the Veterans Memorial Building [City Hall] in Cedar Rapids. The project cost roughly $9,000 in 1927 and encompassed 8,000-10,000 pieces of glass.

Pyle joined Grant Wood at the Stone City Art Colony. He taught painting and the incredibly popular picture framing classes during 1932, and due to student demand, had a teaching assistant (Dennis Burlingame) for the colony’s second year. Pyle won several awards at the Iowa Art Salon for both oils and watercolors (1930-39). Following the art colony, he was selected for Wood’s Iowa State University WPA mural team, creating installations for Parks Library. The young assistant was immortalized by Wood in the 1930 painting, “Arnold Comes of Age,” now in the collection of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.

After winning the three major Iowa State Fair art prizes, including the J.N. Darling Purchase Prize for his 1928 painting “Landscape,” Pyle’s works were sought by private collectors from Kansas City, Chicago, New York City, and Iowa. He joined the Cooperative Mural Painters Group of Cedar Rapids (a division of the Treasury Relief Art Project [TRAP]), headed by Francis Robert White. The team’s only project was the highly controversial WPA mural at the Federal Courthouse in Cedar Rapids, installed in 1936. After numerous complaints, the court ordered the mural painted over in 1964.

During the 1930’s, Pyle’s career garnered him national recognition, particularly for his paintings of locomotives. In 1935, he began a position at Collins Radio Company as advertising manager, then as personnel manager. Until 1941, he managed to paint while working full-time but eventually abandoned his canvas while World War II put heavy demands on the Collins’ workforce. Pyle stopped painting for about twenty years.

After retiring from Rockwell-Collins in 1968, Pyle returned to the life of an artist. Choosing not to revert to his previous watercolor style, he painted abstractions, often of planets and stars. His last one-man show was held at the Cedar Rapids Art Center in January 1973. In June of that same year, while returning from the Grant Wood Art Festival in Anamosa, Pyle was killed in an automobile accident.

Pyle exhibited widely in many Iowa galleries and at the Iowa State Fair. He had one-man shows in Council Bluffs, at the Joslyn Memorial in Omaha, and the Increase Robinson’s Gallery in Chicago. Additional showings occurred at the Kansas City Midwestern Exhibition (1934), Chicago Exposition (1935), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1936), the Corcoran Gallery, the International Watercolor Show (1934), the Phillips Gallery (Washington, D.C.) (1936), and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Online Resources for Arnold Pyle:

Botti Studio of Architectural Arts, San Diego, CA. "Veterans Memorial Window: Grant Wood: Cedar Rapids, Iowa.” No longer available.

Haven, Janet. “Portraiture.” From “Going Back to Iowa: The World of Grant Wood.” Available: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA98/haven/wood/portraiture.html

Iowa State University, Parks Library. “Murals Designed by Grant Wood.” Available: http://www.lib.iastate.edu/art/gwood.html

Iowa State University, Parks Library. “Grant Wood Mural: Other Arts Follow, Engineering Panel.” Available: http://www.lib.iastate.edu/art/gw_othen.html

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. “Arnold Comes of Age. By Grant Wood.” Available: http://www.sheldonartgallery.org

Published Works

Selection from the faculty group photo (1933) found on the Resources Page. Photo courtesy of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

Also in the 1932 Male Faculty photo on the Resource Page.

When Tillage Begins: The Stone City Art Colony and School
Published online October 2003 by the
Busse Library,
Mount Mercy College
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Telephone: 319-368-6465
Fax: 319-363-9060
Email: library@mtmercy.edu

Researcher & Author: Kristy Raine
Library Director: Marilyn Murphy
Editor & Web Designer: Linda Scarth
©Busse Library 2003