(Self-portrait)

Pele de Lappe

De Lappe’s teenage self-portrait foretells a life of adventure and singular determination, with her Mona Lisa expression and jaunty fedora. One year after completing this ebullient drawing in San Francisco, California, Phyllis "Pele" de Lappe moved to Woodstock, New York in 1931 at the age of just fifteen. The daughter of commercial artist and Marxist Wesley de Lappe, Pele had already been a student at the California School of Fine Arts for a year, studying under Arnold Blanche, and had decided to try her luck in the artists hubs of the East Coast. She found inspiration in the nightlife of Harlem, and worked with Alfred Siqueiros and Diego Riviera.

When she returned to the Bay Area in 1934, she immersed herself in the Maritime Workers strike and became an activist in the labor movement. In addition to her fine art, she worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for The People’s World, The New Masses, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her artwork would reflect her sociopolitical sensibilities for the rest of her career, capturing the lives of everyday people. She documented her extraordinary life in her 2002 autobiography, Pele: A Passionate Journey through Art and the Red Press.