William Siegel

William Siegel (1905–1990; born Wilhelm Tsiegelnitsky, later William Sanderson) was an American painter and illustrator.

Early in his career, he worked as a contributing editor publishing illustrations in New Masses magazine.

During the Great Depression he developed a successful career illustrating children's books, including Marion Hurd McNeely's Newbery Honor Book The Jumping-Off Place.

He also worked in magazine illustration and advertising, before being drafted into the U.S. Army in World War II.

He served at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, before being sent to Germany.

Wilhelm Tsiegelnitsky was born in 1905 to Grigori Mojesevich Tsiegelnitsky, a construction engineer, and his wife Berta in a village near Riga, Russian Empire.

His parents were of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish background but the family was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church for economic reasons.

In 1917, during the Bolshevik Revolution they lived with relatives in Rostov-on-the-Don.

While there, William took classes at Chinyenov Art School.

In 1921, the family left Rostov and emigrated to the United States, traveling on short-term visas via Kiev, Italy and Greece.

They were sponsored by relatives in New Jersey, and arrived in the US in 1923.

Their names were anglicized to Gregory, Bertha, and William Siegel.

In Newark, Delaware, William studied with Ida Wells Stroud at the Fawcett School of Industrial Art (later the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art).

He went on to study at the National Academy of Design in New York City from 1924 to 1927.

His teachers included Charles Hawthorne (painting), William Auerbach-Levy (etching) and Charles L. Hinton (life drawing).

Sanderson won prizes in Life Drawing (Suydam Medal), Composition (First Prize), and Etching (Honorable Mention).

In 1926, Siegel had a woodcut illustration published in Der Hammer (to which Moyshe Nadir contributed): "in an intentionally crude style, Siegel portrayed many workers shouting slogans at what was clearly a protest rally."

As early as 1926, Siegel published work in the New Masses magazine as a "contributing editor".

He also contributed to books and pamphlets of International Publishers, the printing arm of the Communist Party USA headed by Alexander Trachtenberg.

In 1928 he joined the Art Students League in New York to study with lithographer Charles Locke, but could not afford to continue.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Siegel earned a steady income as a book illustrator.

(This disqualified him for participating in the Works Projects Administration.) His works included the Newbery Honor Book The Jumping-Off Place by Marion Hurd McNeely; Yermak the Conqueror by P.N. Krasnoff; FanFan in China by Joe Lederer, Freighter Holiday by Fay Orr.

Through the 1930s and 1940s, he published magazine illustrations and covers, appearing in The New Yorker, Esquire, Cue, and Harper’s.

By 1931, Siegel was a member of the John Reed Clubs and showed his work with fellow members Jacob Burck, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, and Louis Lozowick among others.

As of 1931, William Siegel became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

For the club, he served in 1934 as secretary of a Birobidzhan art committee.

He also exhibited at the John Reed Club's ACA Galleries in New York City.

In 1934, the New School of Social Research in New York City exhibited some drawings and possibly watercolors by Siegel as well as Anton Refregier.

His work was included in the 1935 Fifth Exhibition of American Book Illustration, which was sponsored by American Institute of Graphic Arts.

He was active with New Masses until 1936, when he chose to leave, disliking the direction the magazine was moving in politically.

In 1936, he joined others in calling for an American Artists' Congress.

By 1936 he was informally using the last name Sanderson, a name change that became official as of 1941.

In 1937 Siegel held a solo show at the ACA (American Contemporary Art) Galleries in New York.

In 1938, he was appointed art director of the McCue Ad Agency in New York.

In March 1942, William Sanderson was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Kessler Field near Biloxi, Mississippi for basic training.

He served at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver in the Army Air Corps, publishing amusing drawings of life in the army in the base's Rev-Meter newspaper.

He had a solo show of black-and-white drawings of army life at the Denver Art Museum-Chappell House, and began painting watercolors.

While at Lowry he began a lifetime friendship with artist Vance Kirkland.

After the war he became an Assistant Professor of Advertising Design at the University of Denver, teaching there from 1946 until his retirement in 1972.

He was considered "one of the mainstays, one of the people who helped build the School of Art" and is an important modernist artist in Colorado.