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1926 - new work

This is an exhibit of paintings based on a photograph that I believe was taken around 1926. The photograph is of students ranging from kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade. Included in the photo is my father, who I believe is in first grade. The location the Abraham Lincoln School in the south end of Oak Park, IL. The south end of Oak Park was adjacent to Berwyn and to Cicero both immigrant communities. My grandfather came from Slovakia when he was a child, motherless and lived with his sister and her Czech husband in Cicero. My grandmother was Irish whose family followed the train from Philadelphia to a better life in Chicago.
It is an exhibit displaying immigrant children and their innocence which will soon be lost due to the coming of the Great Depression, followed by World War 2. Their faces said it all with sweetness or already hardened by life