Tim Samuelson, cultural historian for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, sent us this rare image of Olinka Hrdy working on her Riverside Studio murals after reading “Lost Olinka,” our story on the subject, published last September.
“Alfonso Iannelli was an early supporter of Goff’s career, and shared considerable correspondence with him over the years,” Samuelson wrote in an email to This Land. “Iannelli was also a staunch early defender of Goff’s role as the creative lead for the Boston Avenue church. The Iannelli Studios in Park Ridge, Illinois, was a multi-disciplinary art studio that did considerable architectural and contract work, including the fountain for Riverside Studio. Both Goff and Olinka Hrdy briefly worked in Iannelli’s studio during the Depression.”
Like Hrdy’s murals, Iannelli’s fountain disappeared from the studio sometime after it ceased to be Patti Adams Shriner’s residence in 1932. No one knows where or when the fountain went.
When Samuelson sent the photo, he suggested it may be evidence that Hrdy painted her murals directly onto the studio’s walls and that they have since been painted over, explaining their mysterious disappearance.
Larry Stockard and others at the Tulsa Spotlight Theater, which has occupied the Riverside Studio since 1953, say they’re sure the murals were painted on canvas and removed—though no one knows when—from the premises.
Though the photograph doesn’t solve the mystery of the missing murals, or of their creator, it does show us the beauty of both, and we thank Samuelson for sending it.
(For context, here’s a current image of the Spotlight Theater and the place where this mural, titled “Symphony of the Arts,” was originally hung, in the center of the building’s foyer, just outside the theater space and directly opposite its front window.)
—Holly Wall, News Editor
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zachary matthews
