Paintings and Drawings by Margaret Peterson, February 6-March 12, 1933

Margaret O’Hagan Peterson was an American painter of abstract art and known for creating a style that was highly influenced by the art of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Born on June 3, 1902 in Seattle, Washington. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor of arts in 1926 and then a master of arts in 1931. From 1928 to 1950, she was an art instructor at her alma mater. She received a travel fellowship to Europe from 1931 to 1932. She later studied with Hans Hofmann, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Andre L’hote. This 1933 exhibition at the Legion of Honor occurred not long after her return to the United States.

In 1937, she married the Canadian writer Howard O’Hagan and later spent 1947-1948 at Green Point, British Columbia to study Indigenous Art at the former Victoria anthropological museum, now the Royal BC Museum. It was here that she became influenced by the Indigenous art styles that she later adopted into her art. Up until this point her art has been highly influenced by Picasso.

She left her teaching career in 1950 because at the height of McCarthyism, she rejected an oath of loyalty imposed by the University of California, Berkeley’s board of regents and left her faculty position for New York. Throughout the 1950s, she would continue to exhibit and travel. In 1951, she went to both Mexico and Guatemala and saw the arts of the Toltecs, Zapotecs, Aztecs, and Mayan cultures and also returned to Cowichan Bay. In 1952 she returned to San Francisco and founded a painting school and in 1956 she moved to Victoria, British Columbia. She had a second solo exhibition at the Legion of Honor in 1960.

She would go on to learn mosaic techniques in Europe in 1963, pursue a new interest in Romanesque and Medieval painting in 1964, and have a mosaic of hers installed in the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria. She spent eleven years on the island of Salina, Italy before returning to Victoria in 1974. From 1976 to 1977, she created a mosaic for the Richard Blanshard building and had a retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1978. Her husband died in 1982 and she died on May 15, 1997 in Sidney, British Columbia.

Sources:
Hughes, Edan Milton, and Crocker Art Museum. Artists in California, 1786-1940. 3d ed. Sacramento, CA: Crocker Art Museum, 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Peterson_(artist)