California artist Ross Dickinson dramatized, by use of vivid colors, his state’s endless confrontation between nature and man in his compelling “Valley Farms.†The contrast between the green of the verdant, irrigated farms and the reddish-brown of the arid, sharply sloping hills is pronounced. In the Great Depression, farmers from the drought-plagued Dust Bowl poured into these areas looking for more agricultural jobs than were available. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of Labor.

Seventy-five years ago, Americans were beset by an economic crisis that may seem all too familiar today. The national economy, in the wake of the stock market crash of October 1929, had fallen into an extended depression. Thousands of banks failed, wiping out the life’s saving of millions of families. Businesses struggled or collapsed. Farmers battled drought, erosion and declining food prices.

A quarter of the labor force was unemployed, while an equal number worked reduced hours. Increasing numbers of people were homeless and hungry. Some 10,000 unemployed artists faced poverty.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, inaugurated in March 1933, and his administration soon initiated a series of economic recovery programs as part of what came to be known as the New Deal. Recognizing that artists not only needed employment, but that art was essential to sustaining America’s spirit, the Treasury Department organized the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in late 1933. It was the first federal government program to support the arts nationally.

Regional committees recruited artists who eagerly went to work all over the country. During PWAP’s brief existence from December 1933 to June 1934, it employed 3,749 artists who created 15,663 paintings, murals, drawings, prints, sculpture and craft objects to embellish public buildings at a cost of $1,312,000. Later New Deal programs produced similar short-term benefits and enduring artwork.

In “Subway†Lily Furedi has assumed the viewpoint of a seated passenger looking down the car at her fellow riders. Characteristically, most people are keeping to themselves, although a man furtively peeks at a woman applying lipstick and a woman glances at the newspaper being read nearby. The artist seems interested in the sleeping, tuxedo-clad musician holding his violin case, presumably because her father was a professional cellist. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service.

In return for modest incomes, the professional, unemployed artists who participated were encouraged to depict the “American Scene.”

The result was a memorable series of works ranging from portraits and group likenesses to cityscapes and images of urban life to depictions of rural scenes and landscapes. They constitute, collectively, a lasting visual record of America at an important moment in its history.

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the PWAP, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has organized an exhibition, “1934: A New Deal for Artists,” on view through January 3, when it will begin a three-year national tour. Drawn from SAAM’s unparalleled collection of New Deal art, the exhibition consists of 56 paintings, each by a different artist. It was ably organized by George Gurney, the museum’s deputy chief curator, with Ann Prentice Wagner, a curatorial associate. A catalog will be available this summer.

Marking the opening of the exhibition in February, Elizabeth Broun, the Margaret and Terry Stent director of SAAM, observed, “The nation is engaged in a great discussion about how to restore confidence during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. One contentious issue is whether and how cultural initiatives should play a role in government recovery efforts. This exhibition, which focuses on the first US government program ever to provide direct support for artists, is relevant to that discussion. The legacy of New Deal cultural programs seems indisputable today as we cherish and mine the resources these ‘workers’ left us.”

Amid the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression, California painter Millard Sheets found good cheer among the urban poor he depicted in a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood in “Tenement Flats.†Bright spots of color on staircases and terraces, colorful sheets hanging from lines and the lively camaraderie among the women and children contrast with the lonely figure far up the hill trudging toward rundown Victorian mansions that had become boardinghouses. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service.

Free to paint the “American Scene” as they saw fit, artists tended to depict regional, recognizable subjects that reminded viewers of traditional American values, such as hard work, community and optimism. Displayed in schools, libraries, post offices, museums and government buildings, these works vividly record the realities and ideals of Depression-era America.

As Gurney points out, “Artists were honored to be paid by the Public Works of Art Program for paintings that would be publicly displayed. The program also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country.”

Some 30 percent of the artists in the exhibition were in their twenties, struggling to gain recognition; 25 percent were first-generation immigrants. Among the participants who carved out important careers later on were Ivan Albright, Ilya Boltowsky, E. Martin Hennings, Herman Maril and Millard Sheets. What is surprising is how many accomplished and often compelling canvases are by painters who are virtually unknown today. Except where noted, all works are dated 1934.

The opening painting in the show is Ross Dickinson’s (1903‱978) eye-popping “Valley Farms,” a richly painted bird’s-eye view that emphasizes contrasts between a verdant green, irrigated valley and dry, reddish-brown swelling hills around it. It recalls the appeal of fertile California for farmers escaping the hopelessness of the Dust Bowl.

The star portrait in the “American People” section is Albright’s (1897‱983) “The Farmer’s Kitchen,” an astoundingly detailed depiction of a weary farmwife, her face an over-the-top accumulation of wrinkles, furrows and drooping, crumpled flesh. This portrayal of the impact of a life of toil and drudgery is not soon forgotten.

By contrast, Russian-born Robert Brackman (1898‱890) suggested the promise of the future in his depiction of a poised young African American girl, “Somewhere in America.” In a canvas bursting with Southwestern color and power, Kenneth M. Adams’s (1897‱966) “Juan Duran,” exudes the strength and vitality of a man of the desert, as painted by a member of the Taos, N.M., artists’ colony. Hennings (1886‱956), another Taos stalwart, conveyed his affection for Native Americans from the Taos Pueblo in “Homeward Bound,” in which two colorfully dressed, dignified Indians traverse an expansive, snowy desert landscape.

Life in America’s large cities was a popular subject for New Deal artists. In New York City, Russian émigré Boltowsky’s (1907‱981) application of brilliant blues, greens and reds make an otherwise drab, ordinary scene, “In the Barber Shop,” come alive, replete with prosaic details and a diverse clientele. In 1936, the artist painted one of the first abstract murals for the New Deal, and went on to became a noted abstractionist.

An Abstractionist who altered his style to meet PWAP representational standards, Paul Kelpe offered his vision of American technological progress and industrial might in “Machinery (Abstract #2).†It is one of a number of paintings the artist said he made “with geometric machinery.†Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of Labor.

In “Subway,” Hungarian-born Lily Furedi (1896‱969) lets us look down the car crowded with diverse passengers, most avoiding eye contact and a few sneaking glances at fellow travelers.

Many viewers will be attracted to the show’s liveliest, loudest, most pungent painting, Daniel Celentano’s “Festival.” This 481/8-by-601/8-inch canvas fairly bursts with activity as a solemn Catholic procession proceeds through Italian Harlem surrounded by a swing band and dancing couples and a butcher, fish seller and pizza vendor peddling their wares.

Young Millard Sheets (1907‱989), who had an impressive career in California, was drawn to poor folks residing in a rundown but colorful neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. In “Tenement Flats,” he delineated the ramshackle buildings and the shabbily dressed women, who, after finishing their laundry, pause to gossip or sit in the shade. This painting later hung in the White House.

In depicting another urban subject, Beulah R. Bettersworth (1894‱968) chose a site close to home. In “Christopher Street, Greenwich Village,” a wintry streetscape, pedestrians hurry through slushy snow and by colorful stores.

Baltimorean Herman Maril (1908‱986), who became a highly regarded Modernist painter, explored his city’s historic past in “Sketch of Old Baltimore Waterfront,” which depicted a Nineteenth Century schooner tied up at an inner harbor dock.

One of the most interesting painters in the show is O. Louis Guglielmi (1906‱956), who was born in Egypt and spent many summers at the MacDowell artist colony in Peterborough, N.H. His semisurreal “Martyr Hill” offers a lonely view of a sculpted bronze soldier, his head bowed in grief, atop a Civil War pedestal before Peterborough’s GAR Hall.

Some New Deal artists found suitable subjects among Americans enjoying or creating leisure during hard times. Julia Eckel (1909‱988), a native of Washington, D.C., but unknown today, evoked the tense, crowded atmosphere of a radio studio as musicians and a leading lady prepare to play their next roles.

Earle Richardson, an African American and native New Yorker who studied at the National Academy of Design, stressed the strength and dignity of the four southern sharecroppers he depicted in “Employment of Negroes in Agriculture.†Going against stereotypes, he defined rural blacks as young, powerful and proud, a people for whom better days lay ahead. One of the few African Americans in PWAP and an artist of great promise, Richardson committed suicide the next year at the age of 23. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of Labor.

In an admirable, fun canvas, Agnes Tait’s (1894‱981) “Skating in Central Park” captured the spectacle of skaters and sledders reveling in snowy Manhattan. “Baseball at Night” by Russian-born Morris Kantor (1896‱974) reflects American ingenuity and technological progress in depicting a lighted nocturnal game between town teams in West Nyack, N.Y., at a time when night contests were rare. America’s national pastime encouraged optimism and affirmed the enduring values of sport during the Depression.

The sweat and perseverance of America’s working people were natural subjects for artists seeking inspiring themes. With many old gold mines reopening in response to rising gold prices during the Depression, workmen with strength and courage were needed to get out the gold. Tyrone Comfort’s gripping “Gold Is Where You Find It” takes the viewer deep inside a low, stifling California gold mine, where a sweating miner in shorts braces one booted foot against a powerful pneumatic drill boring holes that will be stuffed with dynamite. As curator Wagner aptly observes, Comfort was a “dynamite painter.” One wonders what Comfort (1909‱939) might have achieved had he not died five years later. This painting also hung in the White House.

At the other extreme, Romanian émigré Harry Gottlieb (1895‱992) showed workers in Woodstock, N.Y., moving large blocks of ice in a freezing icehouse, and Jacob Getlar Smith (1898‱958) depicted a ragtag group of snow shovelers hired by the government to clear New York City’s streets and park paths.

Douglass Crockwell (1904‱968) proudly portrayed his town’s principal industry, a paper plant. In “Paper Workers,” measuring about 36 by 48 inches, blocklike laborers smooth an enormous roll of newsprint, the major product of a Glens Falls, N.Y., plant.

British-born Max Arthur Cohn (1903‱998) paid tribute to the power and potential of American industry in “Coal Tower,” featuring the dark silhouette of a New York City coal structure standing over a coal-laden barge that has just brought coal for unloading onto a conveyor belt. The coal will power a factory or electrical generating station to help keep the wheels of the city turning.

Another dockside image, with nary a human in sight, “Island Dock Yard” by Belgian-born Karl Fortress (1907‱993) was painted along the Hudson River. This compelling canvas, with its strong emphasis on the angular geometry of structures in the busy Kingston Point railway yard is so well done that one wonders why this member of the Woodstock art colony never became better known.

In “Paper Workers,†Douglass Crockwell depicted workmen smoothing and stamping an enormous roll of newsprint, the principal product of the paper plant that was the pride of his hometown, Glens Falls, N.Y. The artist said he took “some liberties with the human form††the blocky figures of the workers look like they were carved out of wood †because “the whole composition of the picture requires hard structural forms.†Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the US Department of Labor.

An Abstract artist born in Germany, Paul Kelpe (1902‱995), knowing that the PWAP accepted no “nonrepresentational art,” curbed his style to create an image of geometric “Machinery” that reflected technological prowess of which Americans are so proud.

“Golden Gate Bridge” by Ray Strong (1905′006) is a vigorously painted, panoramic view that hints at the engineering know-how required to construct the now-iconic San Francisco structure. It suggests the magnitude of the undertaking and intimated that it would be completed efficiently and expeditiously. FDR hung this celebration of American engineering in the White House.

Joe Jones (1909‱963) depicted the beginning of the demise of an old neighborhood as workers demolished a St Louis building to make way for wider streets and other amenities in “Street Scene,” 1933. Jones will be the subject of a retrospective next year, organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum.

The PWAP was open to artists who were denied other opportunities, such as African Americans, but only about ten such artists participated. The best was Earle Richardson (1912‱935), who, although a native New Yorker, focused on handsome, muscular sharecroppers gathering cotton in the South, such as in “Employment of Negroes in Agriculture.” Richardson’s rich colors, stylized forms and intriguing composition hint at how much fine artwork we have missed because he committed suicide the next year.

On another rural front, “The Farm” by Japanese American artist Kenjiro Nomura (1896‱956) at first seems to showcase a happy scene, but a closer look at the gathering clouds suggests the darker side of country life outside Seattle. Japanese Americans were subject to laws preventing foreigners from owning land, as well as facing other prejudices. During World War II, Nomura, along with many other Japanese Americans, was forced into an internment camp, which interrupted his career until 1947.

In addition to Dickinson’s compelling “Valley Farm” that opens the exhibition, the beauties of the natural world are the subject of paintings featuring the sky reflected in a mountain pond, a jungle, a variety of animals and birds and a scenic rural road.

All in all, this is a wonderfully satisfying exhibition, exposing the fine work of a slew of little-known artists and evoking the American Scene during the Great Depression.

It underscores the value of the New Deal programs that supported America’s artists through a great national economic trial.

A fully illustrated catalog co-published by SAAM and D. Giles Limited, will be available in July. It will feature an introduction by Broun, an essay by historian Roger Kennedy, director emeritus of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and entries for each work by Wagner.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is at Eighth and F Streets N.W. For information, 202-633-1000 or americanart.si.edu.