Fiene's Whopper

Ernest Fiene (rhymes with meany) is a glutton for work. A big man, hard as nails at 46, with a temperament as tough as his constitution, he never paints one picture where ten will do. Result: 18 one-man shows since he left Westphalia, Germany (1911), a reputation as Manhattan's leading painter of skyline, waterfront, bridges, buildings.

Last week hardworking, hearty Painter Fiene finished his most ambitious job: two murals for the auditorium of Manhattan's Central High School of Needle Trades. Biggest uninterrupted murals in the U. S. (17 ft. by 65 ft. each), they teem with 200-odd overneat, idealized figures (53 portraits), tracing the history of the needletrades industry, from immigrant and sweatshop to labor unions and built-in swimming pools.

Because Fiene had to please five juries --not only the Board of Education, but the unions and employers who paid for the murals--he thrice had to re-do the panel of living figures. Along toward the end he admitted, for the first time in his life, that he would be glad to get a vacation.

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