Eugene Henry Mackaben (1920 –3 1 January 1984) was a regional artist based in Tucson, Arizona known for his simple and grassroots-style paintings. Education MacKaben was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1920. A World War II veteran from Chicago, he received a diploma in drawing from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1948. Soon afterwards, he went to Mexico where he studied at the Insituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende 1948–49 and, from 1949 to 1950, at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, where he studied under David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Ruiz. In 1953, he graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with a B.A. in education. Career Mackaben moved to Tucson in 1953. He worked for the Tucson school system as arts and crafts supervisor. He showed his work at the Tucson Art Center gallery and with the 261 Gallery Group at the Temple of Music, and continued to show regionally and locally throughout the 1950s with the Tucson Fine Arts Association. Following a 1954 show of western regional artists in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle’s art critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote: "The most individual of these artist is Mackaben who manages to use the devices of abstract art without a touch of solemnity. He paints the Arizona towns and people, fantastic rocks and desert landscape with a great deal of formal ingenuity and with a rather subtle palette, but always with gusto, whimsicality and humor." In 1958 Mackaben received an award for his woodcut “Shapes of the Desert”, presented by the Tucson Fine Arts Association. He served as the arts and crafts supervisor in the Tucson school system while earning his master's degree in art from the University of Arizona. He was awarded an M.A. in 1959. His thesis entitled “Exploration in the Use of Lucite as a Medium for Oil Painting” is a discussion of eight of his paintings: Gothic Warrior, Retirement, High Country – Evening, Matador, Tintype, Tesuque Singers and Drummers, The Betrayal, and Watermelon Eaters, and "how the medium Lucite affected the aesthetic qualities of color, texture, glazing, transparencies, and permanency...". In 1959 he began teaching art at the University of Arizona Fine Arts College, Pima Community College and conducted several workshops. In 1960 his work “Punks” was featured in the Tucson Daily Citizen in conjunction with an exhibition at the Temple of Music and Art Galleries. In October