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Jenne Magafan (1916-1952)
Ethel Magafan (1916-1993)
Jenne and Ethel Magafan were twin sisters born in 1916 and raised in Colorado Springs. They painted individually and
collaboratively, and created murals during the Depression that still grace public spaces.
After high school, the sisters pooled their money and studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. There they
worked as mural assistants and were encouraged to enter juried competitions for national commissions. Since America
was in the midst of the great Depression, artists like Jenne and Ethel were supported by the government's New Deal
Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was established to create employment and support artists and the arts.
WPA artists often portrayed uplifting images in order to raise the morale of communities trapped in the Depression.
In 1930 Ethel received her first government commission--a painting for the United States Post Office in Auburn,
Nebraska. Other commissions hang in the U.S. Senate Chambers and in post offices in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Ethel's mural Horse Corral was painted for the South Denver Post Office. Jenne was one of three artists to
work on a mural in West High School in Denver. In 1941 Jenne and Ethel worked together on Mountains in the Snow,
a mural for the Social Security building in Washington, D.C.
The Magafan sisters provide an interesting example of two women who could maintain their individual artistic integrity
or combine their talents while fulfilling a common goal of creating art.
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