Robert Overman Hodgell

Hodgell showed an early interest in art and took children’s art classes at Topeka’s Washburn College (now Washburn University). In 1939 he stopped by the Topeka State House to watch John Steuart Curry working on a mural commission and was hired as Curry’s apprentice and then as his assistant. (The artists working on the statehouse mural appear on the cover of a 1940 Scholastic Magazine at right.) Hodgell assisted Curry with other murals and followed him to the University of Wisconsin in Madison when Curry became an artist-in-residence there. The younger artist continued to paint and make prints after retiring from teaching at the university in 1977.