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This new biography reveals Marion Greenwood's central place in the pantheon of history’s remarkable women artists.

Marion Greenwood: Portrait and Self-Portrait—A Biography brings to life a woman who blazed through the twentieth-century art world. Born in Brooklyn in 1909, Greenwood thrived at storied institutions and arts centers such as the Art Students League, the studio of German modernist Winold Reiss, the Woodstock Colony, and Yaddo. In 1933, she catapulted to international fame as the first woman to paint a public mural in Mexico. Diego Rivera celebrated Greenwood as one of “the world’s greatest living women mural painters.” She traveled the globe to create award-winning portraits of people from diverse backgrounds, crossing racial, cultural, and class lines to reflect her vision for a more just world.

This biography, the first about Greenwood, is based on a decade of research and interviews. Author Joanne B. Mulcahy integrates the artist’s adventuresome personal life with her journey to artistic glory. Greenwood comes alive as a notable and spirited part of the heady art scenes of 1920s and 1930s Mexico, New York City, and Paris, and as one of two women artist-correspondents during World War II. After social realism and portraiture fell from favor, Greenwood doggedly stuck with what she called “the human thing” in art. Her freewheeling romantic life and independent spirit defied expectations for women, and she dismissed sexist critics who mixed acclaim for her work with commentary on her stunning beauty.

A feminist pioneer, Greenwood made a living as an artist in a time when few women could. In following Greenwood’s maverick path and artistic achievements, this book reveals her central place in the pantheon of history’s remarkable women artists.

The result of a twenty-year friendship between Joanne Mulcahy and Eva Castellanoz, Remedios traces the transformation of an indigenous Mexican migrant worker to a curandera (healer), community activist, and winner of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Blending creative nonfiction and ethnographic research, Mulcahy shares Eva’s stories, from her early years in Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley to her adult years as a wife, mother, and grandmother in Nyssa, Oregon. Her testimonios capture the hardships and resilience of her life and the lives of others in her community. As a healer, Eva combines rituals, metaphors, and herbs to attend to those who seek her help. The floral crowns she fashions for young women’s quinceañeras and other arts preserve traditions while offering life lessons. Remedios gives us an intimate glimpse into Eva’s family life, her passionate activism, and her complex identity as an indigenous, Catholic curandera.

This updated edition includes revisions throughout the text and a new afterword by the author underscoring the changes in Eva’s life and in the larger world since Remedios’s original publication. For her important work, Eva has been recognized by several organizations and programs including the Oregon Arts Commission, Arts Build Communities, and the Portland Opera. The Crown Maker, a youth opera by the Portland Opera To Go program, celebrates Eva Castellanoz’s legacy and displays how even in a time of fear and divisiveness, hope endures through people who advocate for others and inspire social change.