OLD EL PASO FEDERAL COURTHOUSE
Corner of San Antonio and Campbell streets • 915 533-0048
Guided tours of Tom Lea’s murals in downtown El Paso
Tuesdays, October 4, 11, 18 & 25, 2011 • 5:30 p.m. • Free
Tom Lea’s 1938 Pass of the North mural has inspired generations in its depiction of the giants of El Paso’s history and the representation of its founding cultures: the Indian, the Spaniard, the Mexican and the Anglo. Lea consulted more than 30 volumes and found appropriate models to pose for him in the desert in authentic period costumes. Although this masterpiece is now closed to the public, arrangements have been made through the General Services Administration to view what is arguably the finest mural of its period in the United States. After seeing Pass of the North, participants will walk or ride to the El Paso Public Library to see Lea’s 1956 Southwest mural. He painted it as a “luminous window” looking out upon an elemental landscape. The mural was relocated to the entrance of the new library building in 2006.
Pass of the North, mural
1938, oil on canvas, 11 x 54 feet, El Paso Federal Courthouse