Pied Piper

Date1941

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions22 x 29 3/4 in. (55.9 x 75.6 cm)
Framed (Frame is black, wired, not glazed): 30 3/4 x 38 7/8 x 1 7/8 in. (78.1 x 98.7 x 4.8 cm)

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineGift of the Hilbert Collection

Object number2021.118

DescriptionIn the 1940s, listening to jazz music and wild dancing, fueled by the innovative African American music community of Los Angeles' Central Avenue, were favorite activities for both black and white audiences. Art students were among the creative types who frequented the Central Avenue jazz clubs -- among these students was the young Dick Swift, who captured the crazy exuberance of a hot band and a furiously jitterbugging crowd in this packed-to-the-gills nightclub in 1945. The trumpet player is the "pied piper" leading this frenzied dance, pointing his instrument to the ceiling as he wails away.

Richard H. (Dick) Swift Jr. was born in Long Beach in 1918 and studied art at the Chouinard Institute, the Art Students League of New York City, and the Otis Art Institute before earning his MFA at Claremont College. He taught at Chouinard and the California School of Art before embarking on a 30-year career teaching printmaking at Cal State Long Beach. As a printmaker, he worked in experimental styles, mostly intaglio, and many of his pieces featured religious subject matter.

He exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Japan and Europe, receiving more than 40 art awards. Swift’s work is represented in the collections of Baylor University, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Cal State Long Beach, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, the Philadelphia Art Museum, San Jose State University, Wichita State University, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Hilbert Museum, among others.

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