About the Artist
Artist Mac Schweitzer (1921-1962) created a compelling body of work in the American Southwest. Her subjects ranged from naturalistic studies of desert animals, birds and plants to expressive Native American family scenes, to stylized works and moody abstractions. She created moving landscapes of Canyon de Chelly (shown above), Mesa Verde, the Tucson and Catalina mountains, and many other favorite places.
As an independent artist, keen observer, and passionate participant in mid-century Southwest arts, Mac represented a unique individual within a larger circle of women and men active in Western art and culture. She was preceded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by those profiled (along with her) in An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, (Kovinick and Yushiki-Kovinick 1998). Her artwork gained a major regional reputation and was shown in Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale, El Paso, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, and other locales.
In New Mexico, the work and career of Georgia O’Keeffe was, of course, well known. Arizona’s artistic women pioneers included Mary Colter, Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, Kate Thomson Cory, Jessie Benton Evans, Claire Dooner-Phillips, Lillian Wilhelm Smith, and Marjorie Thomas. Among the works by these significant contributors—plus those by a legion of male artists readily recognized in the West and Southwest—Mac’s repertoire stands apart and remains matchless in its wide scope and personal style.
Born Mary Alice Cox in 1921 near Cleveland, Ohio, the budding artist grew up as a suburban tomboy who lived and breathed horses, cowboy culture, and art. In recognition of her artistic talents, the Cleveland School of Art (later becoming the Cleveland Institute of Art) awarded her a two-year scholarship. Married in 1943 to John L. “Jack” Schweitzer, a fellow art student, Mac adopted her maiden name’s initials (M.A.C.) as her artistic moniker. Their son, Christopher L. “Kit” Schweitzer, was born in 1944.
The young family of three moved West and settled in Tucson in 1946, rapidly establishing a circle of influential friends. Close associates who encouraged and collected her work included well-known artists and anthropologists of the time: Tom Bahti, Byrd Baylor, Dave and Barbara Breternitz, Alice Carpenter, Ed and Marianna Dozier, Maurice Grossman, Edith Hamlin (Maynard Dixon’s widow), Lex and Jane Lindsay, Clay Lockett, Ned and Roz Spicer, Clara Lee and John Tanner, Barton and Margaret Wright, Berta and Adolf Wright, and Winnie and Russell Wise, among others. Jack worked with Ernie Cabat and Jo Gill’s advertising agency. Mac eagerly joined the burgeoning local art scene, with regular juried and invitational shows at the Tucson Fine Arts Association, Arizona State Fair, and other galleries.
Mac Schweitzer became a consummate free-wheeling Arizona artist. The Sonoran Desert, Colorado Plateau, Navajo and Hopi reservations, rugged Four Corners region, and outlying areas were her haunts—the wild places where, after she and Jack divorced in 1952, she and her young son traveled in their battered pickup truck. During summers she and Kit camped among family friends, returning to their rustic cabin in the Tucson mountains during the school year with new artistic imagery to express.
Traveling to northern Arizona and around the greater Southwest, Mac developed close relationships within Hopi and Navajo communities. Mac and Kit were welcomed by the extended families of Charles and Otellie Loloma, Ned Lomayestewa, Fred and Alice Kabotie, and Edd and Bertha Austin. They also visited with Ned Hatathlie, Lloyd Kiva New, and other Native American cultural specialists and artists. Both Dr. Charles Di Peso at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Arizona, and Dr. Joe Ben Wheat in Colorado commissioned Mac to create drawings for their archaeological reports.
In 1958 Mac married archaeologist Arthur H. “Art” White and moved to Navajo National Monument where he served as the park superintendent. They had one son, Thomas D. “Tom” White, born in 1959 and swaddled for his first year in a Navajo cradleboard (like that shown here). Mac’s life was sadly cut short when she died at the Monument in June 1962.
During her short career of just several decades, Mac Schweitzer became known as one of Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” with popular exhibits, awards, and sales of her original paintings, prints, and sculptures. Today, her creative work is little known outside of relatively narrow circles, principally because no gallery or museum held enough work to promote it. The majority remained in private and corporate hands.
After a posthumous Tucson retrospective of 163 works from 52 private collectors for two weeks in 1964, Mac’s distinctive artwork essentially disappeared from the public eye. In 1998 five pieces were included in Peter Bermingham’s slim catalogue and an exhibition titled Tucson’s Early Moderns: 1945-1965 (University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson).
The family collection of Mac’s wide-ranging artwork numbers about a hundred and thirty paintings, prints and drawings, plus more than three hundred sketches. Other works held by private collectors and museums likely amount to several hundred or more works. These holdings, from which this website illustrates a sampling, attest to the exceptional strength of this singular artist’s vision of the American Southwest.
