Marion Kathryn Greenwood (April 6, 1909 – August 20, 1970)[1] was an American social realist artist who became popular starting in the 1920s and became renowned in both the United States and Mexico.

She traveled to Mexico, Hong Kong, Burma, and India, depicting peoples of different cultures and ethnicities and paying special attention to oppressed people in underdeveloped locations, which has at times resulted in critical reception in the modern-era due to issues of ethnic and racial stereotypes.

[2] Her first trip to the Southwest began a theme in her work which involved depicting ethnicity and culture in different parts of the world.

As she visited different locales throughout her life, Greenwood would spend time learning about the people there and use them as subjects for drawings and paintings.

The first visit to Taxco, Mexico in 1932 marked a crucial turning point in her career, as she began to work on fresco murals for the Mexican government.

Greenwood's first fresco mural was Mercado en Taxco (1933), located in the stairwell in the Hotel Taxqueño in Guerrero.

[8] Her work during her Mexican mural period had revolutionary themes and was influenced by the stylization of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera in its figures and dynamic compositions.

[15] Greenwood's murals were often large dramatic scenes with groups of people engaged in cultural practices or in the case of a social works project, workers in their environment.

This project, titled Blueprint for Living, was meant for low-income citizens in government housing and expressed optimism for a more harmonious future.

[8] Around 1940, Greenwood began to focus on easel painting and printmaking, generally depicting powerful, gritty scenes of working classes or insightful portraits.

Greenwood was applauded by critics for "her profound sympathy with the poor and the oppressed of all lands, her natural democratic feeling" and "her disregard of difficulties and class barriers".

[18] In spring 1946, she traveled with her husband Charles Fenn to live and work in Hong Kong, with a journey stopover in London, Burma, and India.

[21] When the painting was completed and unveiled in June 1955, it was vandalized, hidden, and debated mostly due to images that have been perceived as of racial stereotyping.

[21] One of the panels showed an adult black man farming cotton; it is unclear from the mural if he is being depicted as a slave, a sharecropper or a farmer.