Article on the Meditation Room Murals
"Morning" and "Evening" were created by Sam Maitin '51 as collages and installed in the chapel (Meditation Room) on the third floor of the CA House in 2002.
Sam Maitin FA’51, whose death in late December shocked the art world in Philadelphia and beyond, was an astonishing conduit of color and form, wielding it like a delighted child who happened to be a serious craftsman. “The real business of art to me is to play with form, shape, and color,” he said in a 1999 interview. And what interested him was “this joy of just putting color, texture, and shape together in an experimental way.” Note the words: play and joy. To Maitin, words were an inspiration and a part of his technique, written in a vigorous, open hand across his posters and murals and collages, giving voice to wonder.
Though he has been known primarily as a Philadelphia artist, with the hint of limitation that comes with the label, he was anything but provincial. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to England in 1968, he worked at the Curwen Art Studio in London, and was a guest lecturer and instructor at Kent Art College in Canterbury and Camberwell Art College in London, as well as Brevard College in North Carolina. He had numerous opportunities to move to New York (including once when he was offered the opportunity to redesign Time magazine). In addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, some of his pieces can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution. He had major exhibitions in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo, and a 66-foot tapestry hangs at the Tai Chang Tap Factory in Shanghai, delighting the more perceptive workers.
