WPA Mural Seen in New Light A mural in Guggenheim Hall that has watched over faculty, staff, and visitors to CSM’s mail building since the 1930s is receiving new attention as campus painters complete a redecorating project in the second floor hallway. The mural, painted on canvas cut to fit the wall and doorway, arches over a large leaded glass window and the oak double doors at the top of the stairs in Guggenheim. Set in two panels, the mural depicts miners and prospectors with their tools on one-half of the wall and a surveyor, chemist, and miner in 1930s-style clothing on the other half. In one corner, the painter of this large work simply signed his name "Chas A. Dietemann" but there is no date to the mural. The colors are vivid in what is now popularly called "southwest tones." The figures in the mural are life-size or larger and resemble characters in a Thomas Benton painting. Mike Ray, a carpenter with the CSM Plant Facilities Department, has been researching the painter behind the mural. After checking with the Denver Public Library’s Western History Room, Ray found that the painter, Charles A. Dietemann, was listed among Colorado’s Works Progress Administration artists. He was also mentioned in a 1931 Denver Post article as "Young Denver artist studying under London master while on honeymoon" who had "already made a brilliant record for himself as a student in Denver University, in the Chappell School of Art, and the Chicago Art Institute." The Works Progress Administration was a Great Depression era program established by the federal government, which put people from every walk of life to work building roads, bridges, schools, park facilities, and provided job training, day care, and education for families, and hot lunches and recreation programs for children. Each state set its own priorities and maintained records; in Colorado hundreds of miles of roads were constructed or made safer, and many of the distinct cobblestone buildings in Denver’s mountain parks or at county fairgrounds were WPA projects. Artists like Charles Dietemann were employed to decorate these new projects or highlight well-known structures like Guggenheim Hall. Unfortunately, Ray was unable to find any other reference to Dietemann after the 1931 article or the 1939 WPA record. "It’s frustrating to see a young painter mentioned in The Denver Post as a promising artist and then have the trail grow cold after that. Many of the painters hired by the WPA were in mid-career, and their works were listed in WPA records, but Dietemann’s work was not listed. Why he was commissioned to paint a mining scene for the Colorado School of Mines is a mystery, and what he did or where he went following his work with WPA is a further mystery," Ray said. Mines Magazine October/November 1992 WEBMASTER'S NOTE:  More information on the artist can be found at http://www.askart.com/biography.asp?ID=121622.