Wedding Party

Agnes Mills

Painter, printmaker, and sculptor Agnes Eunice Mills was born in New York City in 1915. A prolific multi-disciplinary arts, she specialized in dance subjects and imagery pertaining to the arts. She worked in the Long Island/New York City area for most of her career, eventually moving to Florida.

Mills was a graduate of Pratt Institute and Cooper Union Art School, and was associated with the Bauhaus, Social Realist, and Abstract movements. She worked for the WPA early in her career, becoming the youngest instructor in the Federal Arts Project along with fellow artist Ruth Gikow. She studied under Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, David Siqueiros, Hans Hoffman, Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York, Krishna Reddy, and many other leading printmakers and painters of the time.

For 25 years she served as resident artist for the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company, and several other dance companies hired her to sketch their rehearsals. She was a member of the Artists Union and was Co-Chair for the committee for public use of art. She published the Index of American Design for the Library of Congress.