Mac Schweitzer

Mary Alice Cox "Mac" Schweitzer (1921–1962) was an American artist whose distinct abstract desert style contributed to the development of the "modern" period of art in Tucson, Arizona, and the American Southwest. She received critical acclaim during her short life and after her death. Her artistic style was born out of her love of cowboy rodeo culture and blended with abstract figurative representation.

Life and work

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Schweitzer taught herself to draw horses by attending the rodeo and talking with cowboys about her sketches. It was in the rodeo arena she met Tucson cowboy artist Pete Martinez and watched him draw. Schweitzer would later reflect on this period, “I felt in my bones the West was my country [...] When I saw my first rodeo, I knew I'd never by happy until I came out here.”

During high school she wrote to western artist Will James, enclosing a drawing of a bucking bronco. He wrote back encouraging her to continue the development of her art. Schweitzer earned a scholarship and studied at the Cleveland School of Art. She met and married artist John Schweitzer who left art school to serve in the U.S. army during WWII. Schweitzer quickly acclimated to the cultural environment of the Sonoran Desert city, and in March 1947, Schweitzer exhibited her first solo exhibition in Tucson at the Arizona Inn. The show featured oil paintings, watercolors, and pen and ink drawings. By April she was showing work at the Kay and Elaine Gift Shop at 52 West Alameda Street in Tucson. which received national recognition including being named book of the month by the Junior Literary Guild.

In July 1947 she was included in the Southern Arizona Bank and Trust Gallery exhibit alongside noted Tucson artists Hutton Webster Jr., Charles Bolsius, and Ray Strange.

Schweitzer said, “.”

Schweitzer participated in the important 1948 Tucson Independent Artist’ Group exhibition with a work titled that was noted in the local paper. Her work in the exhibit received formal honorable mention and the first popular choice award. She received numerous Arizona State Fair arts awards as well as the Oklahoma Museum purchase prize. Her work was presented in the second solo exhibition at the experimental 261 Gallery.

In 1949 and again in the early '50s she tried her hand at rodeo riding, placing several times. and in April at the opening exhibit of Raymond Burr’s Swarthe-Burr gallery in Los Angeles.

Citizen Magazine Editor, Micheline Keating, remembering Schweitzer wrote,

In March 1962 she held her last show at the Rosequist Galleries in Tucson. Her oil painting was published with a review from Beatrice Edgerly, an art critic for the Arizona Daily Star,

Her painting of a pueblo, owned by designer Robert Kuykendall, was featured by Mary Brown in the 1962 Tucson Citizen Homes Section.

On June 27, 1962, at nearly 41, Schweitzer's body was found in her car on a dirt road near her home at Navajo National Monument, a remote area on the Navaho Indian Reservation. In February 1964 the Tucson Art Center held a two-week curated by Jack Maul, Harrison Moore, and Mrs. Maurice Grossman. A personal essay by Citizen Magazine Editor Micheline Keating was published as the Citizen Magazine cover story on March 7, 1964, in conjunction with the exhibition.

Schweitzer was included in the critical 1998 University of Arizona Museum of Art Show: .