Art deco muralist Hildreth Meière was "forgotten in plain sight"

Our final Art Deco Centenary designer profile spotlights Hildreth Meière, a pioneering muralist who left her indelible mark on buildings including New York's Radio City Music Hall, but whose legacy was eclipsed by her better-known male contemporaries.

"Mural painting has a history of being undervalued," wrote academic Lydia Hamlett in 2020. The rich but often-overlooked life's work of 20th-century American artist Meière is no exception.

Defined as multi-media decoration for walls, ceilings, domes and floors, murals are an art deco hallmark that characterised many famous examples of 1930s architecture – including Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall and One Wall Street.

These two are among around 100 buildings across America that were decorated by Meière, brought to life by her trademark flattened forms, Byzantine-style imagery and almond-shaped mandorlas.

"Meière's work can be found in several of the sleek vertical setback skyscrapers now identified as art deco," historian Kathleen Murphy Skolnik told Dezeen.

"The art deco approach to design matched the modernity expressed by the architecture, making it a perfect choice for the decoration of these buildings," added the academic, who co-authored the 2014 book The Art Deco Murals of Hildreth Meière with Catherine Coleman Brawer.

Meière produced "remarkable decorative work"

Despite Meière's key role in introducing America to art deco, for which she was recognised with various accolades during her lifetime, the muralist's legacy diminished in the years after her death in a way that was at odds with the significance of her contributions – prompting Murphy Skolnik's and Coleman Brawer's book.

The same year the book was published, an article in The Atlantic by Steven Heller declared Meière "the best art deco designer who almost no one remembers".

"From one coast to the other are many more instances of the same artist's remarkable decorative work, forgotten in plain sight," wrote Celia McGee in the New York Times, also in 2014.

Meière – pronounced mee-air – was born in 1892 in the Flushing neighbourhood of Queens, New York City. From a young age, she was said to demonstrate artistic abilities, often designing costumes, sketching or painting during her education at her Manhattan Catholic girls' boarding school.

"This was just the beginning of her journey into a plethora of diverse mediums," wrote Melissa Anne Graf in 2019.

After graduation in 1911, Meière's mother rewarded her daughter with a trip to Florence. The future artist was seduced by the mastery of Renaissance frescoes, swapping dreams to become a portrait painter with a determination to carve out a life as a muralist.

"I fell in love, once and for all, with mural painting and great, beautiful walls," reflected Meière in 1946.

"The narrative quality of murals appealed to her and I think her love of murals also goes back to her belief that decoration should be integral to the architectural setting," explained Murphy Skolnik.

"As Meière once remarked, if the building looked just as well without the mural, it probably shouldn't be there," added the historian.

Nebraska State Capitol established Meière's career

In 1918, after further art studies, Meière earned her stripes serving as an architectural draftsperson for the US navy following America's entry into the first world war the year before.

It wasn't until 1921 that she completed her first professional mural, when architect Bertram Goodhue commissioned Meière to decorate the great hall at Washington DC's National Academy of Sciences.

This collaboration led to the muralist's biggest contribution to a single project – Goodhue's Nebraska State Capitol, completed in 1932.

Accomplished over eight years, the capitol's murals include polychromatic Guastavino tile mosaics designed by Meière depicting motifs ranging from ducks and eagles to sunflowers and national flags.

Central to the capitol is a grand rotunda, intricately decorated with celestial winged figures finished in colourful geometric forms that reference Byzantine art.

"The whole essence of Byzantine art is the dome, and when you put mosaics on a curved surface, the light striking them changes... the result will be moving light, and a surface that almost appears to be living," said Meière in 1957.

A famed marble floor panel depicting a figure – or "genius" – riding a cloud through the cosmos features at the threshold of the foyer.

Described as Meière’s "first full-blown art deco design", she conceptualised it while in Paris during the seminal Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925.

"Her classically inspired genius, with flowing hair and billowing drapery, and her geometrically patterned lightning, which strikes the surging, stylised waves, reflect the dynamism and fluidity of the emergent art deco style showcased at the exposition," wrote Murphy Skolnik and Coleman Brawer.

"Without question, the Nebraska State Capitol was her most significant work, which Meière herself acknowledged," continued Murphy Skolnik. "It was her largest commission and established her reputation as a muralist."

The appointment cemented Meière not only as an artist but as a business director who understood the importance of collaboration.

"In Meière's time, women were not routinely afforded large mural commissions," noted Heller.

"She was extremely conscientious about meeting deadlines and aware of the need to market herself," added Murphy Skolnik.

Muralist was "trailblazer for women"

Closer to home, Meière created striking gold-leaf glass mosaics and stained glass windows for New York's St Bartholemew's Church in 1930 – a project that the International Hildreth Meière Association describes as reflective of Meière's "versatility within her art deco style".

"Meière designed for diverse materials," agreed Mark Jenkins, writing in the Washington Post in 2011. "She did tapestries and stained glass as well as works in tile, metal, oil paint and glass mosaic."

Around 2.5 million Meière-designed crimson and gold mosaic tiles clad the walls and ceiling of the Red Room on the ground floor of one of New York's earliest art deco skyscrapers, One Wall Street. The intricate arrangement of the tiles results in a distinctively glittering spectacle, recently approved for interior landmark status.

The space, originally a reception room completed for the building's bank in 1931 and just converted into a luxury shoe salon for French department store Printemps, is a grand display of striking lines and opulent materials including Verona red marble columns and a bronze-clad entrance vestibule.

"Meière was a master muralist who was a trailblazer for women in the fields of architecture and design," remarked Printemps CEO Laura Lendman earlier this month, emphasising the need to preserve the Red Room's legacy.

Across town at the Rockefeller Center, the 1930s entertainment venue Radio City Music Hall is chiefly famous for its glowing neon signage and recognisably art deco architecture by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey.

But passersby who tilt their heads upwards, said McGee, "would suddenly be struck by brightly coloured figurative roundels on the 50th Street facade".

Fabricated in mixed metal and enamel, the illustrative relief sculptures were designed by Meière in 1931 in lavish art deco style to represent dance, drama and song.

Developer John D Rockefeller Jr is said to have been shocked when presented with the roundel designs, which he believed to exhibit inappropriately naked bodies.

"Meière agreed to alterations, but not much of the nudity vanished," noted McGee.

The muralist's lesser-recognised list of contributions to well-known architecture goes on. Meière was a decorated artist of her day and the first woman appointed to the New York City Art Commission, receiving awards including the American Institute of Architects' 1956 Fine Arts Medal.

But all too often, it has instead been many of Meière's male architectural contemporaries whose legacy has outlasted them.

"Unfortunately, so many women from that era have been forgotten or overshadowed," said Murphy Skolnik.

"And with time, buildings and their decoration tend to be associated with the architect who designed them, and artists responsible for the murals and sculptures don't get credit for their work," she added.

The historian also offered the post-war move away from representative art towards abstraction as a likely reason why the muralist's work was all-too quickly forgotten in the mainstream, remembered only by scholars and art appreciators.

While Meière famously wished to be known as an artist rather than a "woman artist", Murphy Skolnik noted the muralist's belief that professional women required greater levels of competence than the men of her day if they were to establish themselves in the competitive world of work.

"But her high level of professionalism overcame any possible drawback caused by her gender," argued the historian.

"For the most part, I think women artists, and especially architects, are still being singled out by their gender," concluded Murphy Skolnik. "And I think that Meière would still be fighting against this."

Meière passed away in 1961 after a 40-year career. The International Hildreth Meière Association was founded in 2004 to celebrate the muralist's legacy. The association is run by the artist's great-granddaughter, Anna Kupik, and her granddaughter, Hildreth Meière Dunn.

The photography is courtesy of the International Hildreth Meière Association.

Art Deco Centenary

This article is part of Dezeen's Art Deco Centenary series, which explores art deco architecture and design 100 years on from the "arts décoratifs" exposition in Paris that later gave the style its name.

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