The WPA, or Works Progress Administration Arts portion, was originally an idea that George Biddle presented to his close friend and classmate, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Biddle was a talented painter who felt the pain of the unfortunate and poor arts community during the Depression. It was approved and established on 1935 to help finance the nation through The Great Depression, which left millions of Americans unemployed. The WPA, which was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, was a plan to establish Americans with jobs. For 11 years, from 1933 to 1943, when the program ended, the federal government employed over 8.5 million people including artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers, and dancers even though the program was mainly created to employ manual laborers for an average salary of $41.57 a month. The artists? who participated in the WPA ranged from figurative and academic, all the way to abstraction and surrealism, in addition to almost every oth!.
er school of painting, sculpture and the graphic arts including prints and posters.
The New Deal arts project, or Public Works of Art Project (PWAP),.
provided work for jobless artists, but they also had a larger mission: to promote American art and culture and to give more Americans access to what President Franklin Roosevelt described as "an abundant life." The projects saved thousands of artists from poverty and despair and enabled Americans all across the country to see an original painting for the first time, attend their first professional live theater, or take their first music or drawing class. It also gave the artists worldwide recognition for their art. As to be expected there was mass controversy about the program. Politicians were beside themselves. Some believed the program should be ended because it was useful, and some thought it should be expanded. Such controversy, along with beginning of World War I, eventually ended the program but it went through many transformations throughout its 11-year run.
