Anna Franke Gonzalez (1897 – 1973)

Fiesta, by 1931, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 30 x 25 inches, exhibited Society of Independent Artists, Grand Central Palace, NY, March 7 – March 30, 1931, no. 366 (remnant of label verso and listed in catalog)

$4500

Anna Franke Gonzalez was a New York City-based painter, who was born in Bound Brook, New Jersey. She married Pedro Manuel Gonzalez, a native of Cuba, in 1923. By 1928, she was living on Sullivan Street in Manhattan. Little is known about her art education, but census records indicate she completed four years of college by 1940. She exhibited at The Society of Independent Artists from 1928 through 1931 and at The Salons of America in 1930 and 1934, seemingly focused on portraits, still life, and landscapes painted in an American Scene idiom like the present work, which likely depicts the Feast of San Gennaro. Started in 1926, the Feast was organized by Neapolitan immigrants to honor the Patron Saint of Naples. In the early years, the Feast was a one-day affair hosted on Mulberry Street in the heart of Manhattan’s Italian community, a short walk away from Gonzalez's home. The Feast has since become a nearly two-week long event which stretches across eleven blocks of Little Italy. Despite being painted at the beginning of the Great Depression, Gonzalez managed to capture the pageantry of the Feast with flags, banners, flowers, and balloons. Gonzalez is listed in Who Was Who in American Art.