Maxo Vanka Murals
Gift to America was originally produced and presented by The Iron Clad Agreement, a theatre company co-founded by actor Wil Hutton and myself (Executive Producer.) All of our Pittsburgh work (1976 - 1981) was original and based on various aspects of industrial history and the history of technology. The Iron Clad Agreement archive can be found in the Curtis Theatre Collection, a special collection at Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh.
In the late 1970s, Dr. David Demarest, Jr., Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of our Board of Directors, took me to St. Nicholas and showed me the murals. I was astounded and inspired! I believed that we could make a theatre piece in St. Nicholas, but that the murals themselves would be the star performers.
We commenced to produce a theatre event about Maxo Vanka and the murals which would be read by actors, standing in various places in the church. Our performance was created specifically for St. Nicholas. The murals did indeed do the acting, thanks to lighting assistance from WQED. Dave Demarest wrote the script; Geoffrey Hitch directed. The readers were: Ann Beigel, Catherine Ames, Doug Mertz, Larry Meyers. Dance and music were provided by the Tamburitzans and the St. Nicholas choir under Ed Sambol. After this initial run, the script was given to St. Nicholas for their use. Of course, I was very pleased to see that Gift to America had been performed again in recent times.
I enjoyed meeting the artist's widow in her home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
See the Vanka Murals
Maxo Vanka’s “Gift to America:” art that lives on
Maxo Vanka completed 25 individual murals in two brief but intense periods in 1937 and 1941. He then returned to the Church in 1951 to add the five symbols of Christianity to the choir loft.
Vanka’s paint medium was not obvious. It is documented that he tried to make his own from a variety of substances – including mayonnaise – but finally settled on a commercial preparation of casein.
Father Zagar lightly prescribed the artist’s subject matter and Vanka maximized his opportunity to pay tribute to faith while expressing his passionate beliefs about social justice, injustice, the horrors of war and helping to preserve and celebrate cultural identity among an immigrant population.
The 75-plus year presence of the 25 main murals has been largely unaltered with approximately 4,500 square feet of the original paintings on constant display. Other aspects of Vanka’s work including a detailed textile design that covered almost every other open wall and pillar space were modified in keeping with the needs of the Church.
(Text and Pictures courtesy of vankamurals.org)
Gift to America Play
The Evangelists: Luke, one of many murals
Photos courtesy of vankamurals.org