Background
Edwin Boyd Johnson was born on November 4, 1904, in Watertown, Tennessee.
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Edwin Johnson
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Education
Not long thereafter, the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended grade and high school. After being graduated, he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1925-1930). He also studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City.
Career
The Bryan Lathrop Foreign Traveling Scholarship of $1500 (1931) enabled him to study fresco painting at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, the Atelier de Fresque of Paris, and the Ecole Egyptienne des Beaux Arts in Alexandria, Egypt. One of those, "Mountain. Kimball," hangs in the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. While Johnson painted in both water colors and oils, he is best known for his murals, which were funded by the World Pet Association Federal Art Project.
These include the recently restored "Airmail," in the Melrose Park Library (Chicago - 1937), The Old Days, in the Tuscola, Illinois, post office (1941), People of the Soil in Dixon, Tennessee, which, although photographed for the 1996 book Tennessee Post Office Murals, is no longer open to view. and the City Hall mural in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1936).
After the war he took up residence in Mexico City, where he turned his artistic focus to photography. He died in 1968.
Achievements
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He was the recipient of several awards, among them the Joseph N. Eisendrath Prize for "Nude" in 1938 and, in 1940, the William Mont Rose French Memorial Gold Medal from the Art Institute Alumni Association for his painting "Mother and Child." As a participant in the government"s Alaskan project, he painted pictures of that state to promote protection of the wilderness.
Membership
He was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists, and during the 1930s and early 40"s, he participated in many of their exhibits. He was an honorary member of the United States Armed Forces in World World War World War II
