Mitchell Siporin was well known for his commitment to social justice, which shines through in many of his easel Social Realist paintings and major murals. He was stationed in Italy with the Army Art Corps during WWII.

After the war, Siporin won a Guggenheim Fellowship* and the Prix de Rome*.

Source:
Elizabeth Kennedy, Chicago Modern 1893-1945

Mitchell Siporin contributed illustration work to Esquire and The New Masses, the later a socialist journal. During the 1930s Depression, he was one of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) artists and received a commission along with Edward Millman to do the largest mural commissioned under the Federal Arts Project.

During World War II he had one-man shows at the Downtown Gallery in New York, and was part of the group show at the Metropolitan entitled "Pintura Contemporanea Norteamericana" which also toured Mexico and South America. He received the Florsheim prize from the Art Institute of Chicago and was collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art.

After the war he was awarded a Guggenheim and later the Prix de Rome from the American University. He settled in Massachusetts where he founded the Department of Fine Art at Brandeis University.

Source:
Mitchell Siporin : The Early Years 1930-1950 by Judith Hansen O'Toole published by Babcock Galleries in 1990.