Replanting the Wasteland
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Issues relating to the management of public lands are the focus of these two murals by Ernest Fiene. White-faced Herefords are being driven through western grazing country in Winter Roundup. In 1938, Fiene described his artistic intentions for the piece when he wrote, “I endeavored in this mural through the elements of sky, distant mountains and varied rhythm of the cattle on the prairie to create the impression of immensity and unity.”
Replanting Wasteland depicts the work conducted after a forest fire. Young men, possibly members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, plant acres of new seedlings after a forest fire. Fiene sought to “create a rhythmic balance of the figures and at the same time to illustrate the actual process” by including authentic tools and baskets to instill an educational value to this work.
Fiene was born in 1894 in Elberfield, Germany, and moved to the United States in 1912. He studied in New York at the National Academy of Design, the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and The Art Students League, and in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
