In 1936, artist Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu painted a colorful Works Progress Administration lobby mural installed in the La Jolla Post Office (built in 1935) at 1040 Wall St., which is still intact; the building is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
The painted oil-on-canvas mural in the La Jolla Post Office is called “California (La Jolla) Landscape,” and was created for the Section of Painting and Sculpture, according to U.S. Post Office historical records.
According to historical documents, the mural was described on the National Register of Historic Places Registration form when it was amended in 2021:
“An oil canvas-coastal landscape by Chicago-trained muralist Belle Baranceanu covers the top 8.5 feet of the western lobby wall of the La Jolla Post Office. The painting describes suburban neighborhoods with Spanish-style homes. The neighborhood has hilly topography, twisting streets, large, vegetated lots, and distant marine views.
“The mural surrounds the door of the supervisor’s office, which interrupts the central portion of the composition. The practical need to come to the doorway presented the artist with a technical challenge and opportunity for creativity. Using the Cubist compositional technique of simultaneous and multiple viewpoints, Ms. Baranceanu collaged various residential vignettes and views around La Jolla Cove into an integrated composition that arcs around the doorway.
“The scene has been flattened and abstracted through large swaths of broadly applied color in a springtime palette of yellow-green hillsides and azure-blue sea. The main colors are contrasted with buff-colored coastal cliffs and deep green shrubbery. High abstracted white houses, covered in burnt orange roofs, judiciously punctuate the scene. The light color palette ad strong contour lines create an idyllic and pastoral mood while the flattened and abstracted hued, warm-toned, square tiles cover the lobby floor and wall dado, while the blues and greens provide complimentary contact to the lobby’s color scheme.
“Ms. Baranceanu reportedly walked up Mt. Soledad with her sketch pad and drew what she saw, so all the scenic components have been taken from the landscape as it exited in 1935. Identifiable elements in the foreground, like the arched ‘pig tail’ bridge to the left of the doorway, are combined with distant ‘bird’s eye’ views of the La Jolla Shores beach and Scripps Pier, located to the far upper right of the composition. La Jolla Cove occupies the middle portion of the composition, directly above the supervisor’s door. The landscape looks inviting and believable, and to those familiar with it there is no single place where one can absorb all these elements at the same time. They only gradually reveal themselves as one ascends, much as Ms. Baranceanu did on her walk up the hill.
“In uniquely documenting La Jolla at a specific point in time, the landscape mural localizes the Federal presence in the community. Its pivotal location on the end lobby wall completes a simple and functional public space and enlivens the mundane task of waiting in line for window service. Painted within months of the building’s 1935 competition, the mural retains its integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. Professionally restored, it is in excellent condition.”
A LOT OF WORK
A muralist for the WPA curriculum project, she painted murals for Roosevelt Junior High School (Building Padre Dam and Potola’s Departure) in 1937-38. Between 1939 and 1940 she did a WPA mural titled “The Seven Arts” in the La Jolla High School Auditorium.
According to Daniel Delahate, federal preservation officer for the US Post Office, the La Jolla Post Office mural, “…was an interesting time in post office history known as ‘New Deal murals.’”
WHO WAS SHE?
Baranceanu was born in Chicago on July 17, 1902, and was an American painter, teacher, muralist, lithographer, engraver, and illustrator.
Known for her murals and paintings she is said to have studied her profession at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts under Anthony Angarola, to whom she was engaged until he died in 1929.
Baranceanu was her mother’s maiden name and her parents, both Romanian Jewish immigrants, separated during her early childhood, and Baranceanu grew up on her maternal grandparent’s farm in North Dakota.
Active in Chicago during the 1920s as a teacher and exhibitor, she worked in Los Angeles from 1927-1928 before moving to San Diego in 1933.
Baranceanu was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists and exhibited her work at the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Institute, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and others.
SCHOOL CONNECTIONS
Baranceanu taught at the La Jolla School of Arts & Crafts and the Frances Parker School where her artwork can be viewed.
Mary Cook, director of Alumni Relations, at Francis Parker School, said artist, educator, and Parker Arts Hall of Fame member, Baranceanu, was known as “Miss B.” on campus and by her students at Francis Parker School.
“In 1962, she created a stunning mosaic artwork with her eighth-grade class at Parker’s Mission Hills Campus (above). The school, through the Alumni Impact Fund and other generous contributors, engaged Kim Emerson Mosaics to professionally restore the mosaic in July 2021. Fully restored, the Parker mural is proudly displayed again on the Mission Hills Campus for generations of students to continue to enjoy.”
Barancenau taught art at Francis Parker School for 23 years, from 1946-1969, and was an “American Linear Expressionist who brought immense creativity into the classroom as a creative teaching artist,” Cook added.
“She was described as a beloved and impactful teacher who got her students excited about art. She inspired children to create magnificent works in multiple mediums, including sculpture, murals, and tile mosaics,” Cook continued.
“A tireless creator, Miss B. also taught, designed, and artistically produced the annual theater program at Parker for 21 years.”
Her impact extended far beyond Parker’s campus as Miss B. was also a neighborhood fixture in Mission Hills (she lived in a bungalow on W. Lewis Street) and developed close relationships with Parker’s parents.
The artist was often invited to students’ family homes for dinner and was like family to many of them.
Cook said Miss B. was known for jetting about campus in her sandals; “very avant-garde and progressive at the time!”
“Alumni have shared that they kept projects that they or their siblings did in Belle’s class for many years – many of them still have the work they made in class or artwork that she gifted their parents.”
Francis Parker School inducted Baranceanu into the Parker Arts Hall of Fame in 2021.
The artist died on Jan. 18, 1988, in La Jolla, according to several websites she was said to be 85 or 86 at the time.
