For a few years in the 1930s, the name Leland Knoch seemed to be everywhere in the Pittsburgh art scene. The radical North Side painter — his work described as “proletarian” even in the mainstream press — drew attention for their grim scenes of poverty and labor struggle. Politically militant, open about his poverty and his physical disability, Knoch organized artists across the city.
Then, seemingly as soon as he appeared, he was gone. Knoch died at age 41, leaving a final gallery show and a New York Times obituary notice as his legacy. Images of his work are hard to find, but the few that remain are striking. Comparing his work favorably against a colleague’s, Knoch said in 1934: “I don’t know what class of people could understand it. But I know the proletariat will understand mine.”
“To call myself an artist”
Knoch was born on the North Side in 1901. As a young man he worked as a salesman — “pushing doorbells,” as he put it, “in a not too successful attempt to sell almost everything but vacuum cleaners.” He described his education in a 1940 newspaper interview:
Allegheny High School graduated me into a world which had little respect for my four years of culture and scant use for my inexperience as a draftsman. This disillusionment and the fact that I did not have the finances with which to continue my education at Carnegie Tech day school was the finale to the hope, which I had cherished since the fifth grade, of being an architect.
Advised to develop his gift for drawing, Knoch enrolled at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1933. Within two years, his watercolors were hanging at a show of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. “This discovery struck me with all the force of a drunken conversion of a revival service . . . I began rather timidly to call myself an artist.” His painting “Case Records,” a sickly green portrayal of a welfare relief office, won third prize at the Associated Artists exhibition.
Growing popularity
From there, Knoch’s art, politics and personal style drew frequent attention. In 1936, he caused a furor when the One Hundred Friends of Pittsburgh Art — a group that bought works to donate to public schools — sought “Case Records” for $50, more than he had initially asked. Knoch shot back with a sudden counteroffer: $100. The move so outraged the group that one member resigned.
Knoch appeared in radical and activist circles inside and outside Pittsburgh. His mural “1934,” depicting surging masses of red-flag-waving workers, a tyrannical capitalist and a clergyman speaking before the Cathedral of Learning, was shown at New York’s John Reed Club, a center of Communist culture and writing. He addressed the local Pen & Hammer, a branch of a national left-wing intellectual collective that published its own magazines. He submitted a mural depicting the Whiskey Rebellion for the Downtown post office; the submission wasn’t accepted.
Knoch made no secret of his poverty. He declined to pay the Associated Artists’ membership fee, explaining: “I live in a neighborhood where, if you are not on relief, you are considered a social climber. . . . I make no bones about it. I like to eat, and so I am on relief.” Winnings from small exhibitions and watercolor sales helped, as did a job with the Museum Extension Project of the Works Progress Administration. Knoch met his wife, Ann, at the project, which hired artists to churn out models and dioramas for educational use.
Painting truth
His paintings often seemed to follow an ironic political theme. “Mansion in the Sky” depicted a squalid shack; “Limousines for Those Who Work” showed workers riding a trolley. A row of shanties, occupied by the unemployed, was entitled “Valhalla.” He told a reporter: “I am a painter of the proletariat, but I find truth today is the most devastating thing to handle.” Even his Christmas cards followed the theme: One showed the angel of peace flying off the planet atop a cannonball, while another depicted a skull and artillery shell encircled by a holiday wreath.
Interviewers occasionally remarked on Knoch’s disability, which affected his back (the specific nature of his disability wasn’t made clear). Asked whether he was sensitive to discussing it, he answered: “Hell, no. I never think of my back unless I happen to notice myself in a mirror. I feel perfectly normal. It just happens that my limitations are visible, whereas yours are not.” He was a guest speaker at the first meeting of the Pittsburgh Fellowship of Handicaps, a group representing locals with disabilities.
In 1936, Knoch got what seemed to be his big break. An unidentified woman benefactor shoved an envelope full of cash in his hand while he stood at a street corner, enabling him to travel to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. There, he would study under the left-wing painter Boardman Robinson and the muralist George Biddle. Something clearly went wrong: In a letter home, Knoch complained of “lassitude,” and when he returned he skewered the school as a “chromium and concrete mausoleum of culture with the air of a suburban railway station.” Robinson, well known for his radical magazine illustrations, suggested Knoch hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunities offered.
“Part of community life”
Whatever happened in Colorado, Knoch returned to his museum work and launched new projects. He founded and headed the Allegheny Artists League, a group of some 40 North Siders who met weekly and sold their works at the North Side Market House. One show ranged “from towers to tenements, from good painting to some that is pretty bad,” as a Sun-Telegraph writer described it. “We are trying to make our work a part of community life,” Knoch said. “Art can no longer be embalmed in museums.”
That philosophy continued with Knoch’s move to the newly built Terrace Village housing project at the southern edge of the Hill. Knoch was the first director of the Terrace Village Art Center, where residents of the low-income project exhibited their work. Cultural life there reflected the New Deal: Working-class residents displayed works by theme (“the subject must be flowers” at one 1942 show) and the project’s one-year celebration featured performances by a W.P.A. band.
Legacy
On May 2, 1942, Knoch died at his Wadsworth Street home. A newspaper obituary didn’t say whether his death followed an illness; according to his death certificate, the cause was “coronary occlusion.” He was noteworthy enough for a small death notice in the New York Times. “His watercolors hang in many prominent Pittsburgh homes,” a local obituary read. The headline surely would have been to his liking: “Paintings championed cause of working class.”
He is buried at Union Dale Cemetery on the North Side.
In 1940, Knoch described his philosophy to a newspaper reporter:
Without liberty art ceases to be creative and becomes as formalized an unexciting as cemetery landscaping. The artist should remain true to his inspiration and do the best job of which he is capable, and in so doing will create the soundest propaganda a democracy can have.
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