Marion Greenwood was an American social realist artist who became popular starting in the twenties and became renowned in both the United States and Mexico. She is most well known for her powerful murals, but she also practiced easel painting, printmaking, and frescoes. Marion Greenwood was born in Brooklyn in 1909. She exhibited artistic talent at a very young age and left high school at the age of fifteen to study with a scholarship at the Art Students League. There she studied with John Sloan and George Bridgman. She also studied lithography with Emil Ganso and mosaic with Alexander Archipenko. At eighteen, she made multiple visits to Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. There, she painted portraits of intellectuals-in-residence and gained experience and knowledge through conversation. Still in her teens, Greenwood used the proceeds from a portrait of a wealthy financier to begin her travels through Europe. While she was there she studied at the Academie Colarossi in Paris.