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A painter, muralist, illustrator, and author, Tom Lea packed a lot of art—and a lot of life—into 93 years. Except for a body of work done while he was a World War II correspondent, Lea's oeuvre depicts, in both images and words, the austere beauty of the American Southwest and its stalwart inhabitants. Although Lea was a living legend in his native Texas by the time he reached 50, his fierce artistic independence and his disdain for personal homage and publicity rendered him largely unknown beyond his home state.

That is soon to change. Light from the Sky: A Tom Lea Retrospective, 1907-2001, an exhibition of paintings, works on paper, photo panels, posters, and ephemera, will acquaint museumgoers across the country with an extraordinary artist. Though Lea primarily focused on regional imagery of the American Southwest, his themes are universal, and viewers from all parts of the country will find much to appreciate in his work.

Lea was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1907. He studied for three years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was an apprentice to John Warner Norton, one of the most respected muralists of the 1920s and 1930s. During the Great Depression, Lea painted murals in Washington, D.C., Texas, Missouri, and New Mexico for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Like other prominent American regionalists, he was less influenced by European modernism and generally preferred to render landscape and people in a realistic style.

In the late 1930s, Lea expanded his artistic repertoire by illustrating books by writer and folklorist J. Frank Dobie. By World War II his illustrations—particularly his ability to portray the common person—had attracted the attention of publisher Henry Luce, who hired him as a war correspondent for Life magazine. Lea accompanied the Allied forces into both theaters of war, documenting the horrific reality and raw emotion of war in a way that had rarely been seen before.

Lea returned to El Paso following the war and took up yet another career alongside his painting—this time, that of a writer. He produced six books over the next 20 years, including a two-volume history of the King Ranch in Texas and two best-selling novels; in the early 1970s painting again became his priority, although he continued to write.

Light from the Sky is co-curated by William Thompson, independent curator and Lea scholar, and Debora Rindge, professor of art history at North Central College, Naperville, Illinois, and a specialist in western American art. In addition to paintings and works on paper, the exhibition will include photographic reproductions of some of the artist's murals, copies of Life magazine showing his work, and Lea's sketchbooks and novels, all of which acquaint viewers with the totality of a remarkable life and career.

Light from the Sky is made possible through the generous support of James H. Clement Jr. and Maureen and Robert Decherd.