1906-1992

Frederick Shane was born in Kansas City, Missouri and depicted life in the Midwest during the mid-twentieth century in a surrealist style. Shane’s work was influenced by other American Regionalists like Thomas Hart Benton. His paintings showed the everyday life of rural, working-class American people in vivid colors and expressive brushstrokes.

Shane taught art classes for forty years at the University of Missouri. And during World War II, as a part of the Army Medical Corps, painted scenes of the war to publish in newspapers. During the 1930s, Shane also completed a mural for the Works Projects Administration at a post office in Eldon, Missouri.