"Milo Maize" Ed. 20

  • Biography

    Merritt Mauzey (1897-1973)

    Mauzey was born in Clifton and farmed and worked as a clerk in Nolan County.  He moved to Dallas in 1927, where he worked in a cotton gin and for a cotton-exporting firm.  He studied art by correspondence. Around 1933, Mauzey studied life drawing under John Knott, and painting under Frank Klepper at the Dallas Art Institute.  In 1938 he began a series of fourteen lithographs interpreting cotton and the cotton industry.   From 1943 to 1962, Mauzey produced an abundance of work while employed by Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.  During World War II, Mauzey was an instructor in lithography at he Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School.  In 1946 he received a Guggenheim Fellowhip that enabled him to execute a series of lithographs dealing with Texas themes.  He also composed and illustrated children's books based on Texas subjects.  Mauzey died in a Dallas hospital and was buried in Dallas.