MOWA Exhibit Honoring Marion Coffey Long Overdue

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Milwaukee native Marion Coffey always planned to be an illustrator, artist and printmaker, and her sea of accomplishments is testament to her extensive talent, intellectual curiosity, and expressive nature. The one thing Coffey never accomplished during her lifetime was being honored with her own dedicated exhibition. The Museum of Wisconsin Art has, at long last, rectified that shortfall.

“Marion Coffey: The Art of Color,” which opens at the West Bend museum on May 7, is a showcase of vibrant colors, natural scenery, and visual chronicles of her travels to Europe and Africa. Coffey, who passed away in 2011 at age 87, once said, that she painted images “not exactly how they may look, but how I seem them.” Apparently, she saw everything with the same level of simplicity and high emotions with the same bright promises of a better world.

“She has a joyous expression in her work, and we haven’t had enough of that lately,” says MOWA Executive Director Laurie Winters, who curated the exhibition of 40 pieces by the late artist with the help of her daughter Lisa Coffey-Robbins. “This is her very first exhibition and my only regret is that this didn’t happen during her lifetime.”

Coffey was born to a single mother, Mary Kunzelmann, in Milwaukee in 1924, and shortly thereafter the pair moved to Chicago. Coffey’s mother was a salesperson, and as a little girl Marion would stay in the car while her mother made sales calls. Armed with a pad of paper, crayons and colored pencils, Marion entertained herself by drawing while her mother worked, laying the cornerstones of her artistic career. She went on to attend a variety of prestigious art schools, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Fountainebleau School of Art, 40 miles southeast of Paris, France.

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In the 1940s, Coffey went work at a major Chicago ad agency, one of the first women illustrators in the industry. The agency’s clients included Coca-Cola, Coppertone Suntan Lotion and RCA. Her advertising work was realistic and anecdotal, in distinct contrast with her later fine art, and she sometimes used her own image when it was appropriate. She also did illustrations for the Chicago Tribune and, after returning to Wisconsin to live with her mother in West Bend, for the Milwaukee Journal. In 1952, she married John Louis Coffey, who eventually went on to become Judge Jack Coffey, occupying the bench with the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Marion Coffey eventually abandoned commercial art for a more expressive form of fine art, much of it showing influences of both French Impressionism and German Expressionism, as well as that of American artist Milton Avery. She found inspiration in her plein-air paintings of the Wisconsin countryside and loved working with handmade paper, exhibiting her work at the Charles Allis Museum and other are galleries and venues.

“Marion Coffey worked very boldly, and that’s surprising,” Winters says. “She did things more tediously and laboriously because she was a perfectionist about color, and she knew how to make her colors come alive.”

Marion Coffey: The Art of Color runs May 7 through July 10 at The Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Avenue, West Bend. An opening reception will be held May 7 from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, visit wisconsinart.org.