Bernard Steffen (1907-1980) Painter, specialized in rural scenes and landscapes. Printmaker. Studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Art Students League, the Los Angeles Art Students League, and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Lived in Neodesha in 1930 and later in Woodstock, NY. Steffen took a rural sensibility to New York, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Was a Works Progress Administration muralist from 1934-1941 where he focused on landscape and eschewed the romance and narrative that marked the Regionalists. Steffen painted the mural, "Neodesha First Inhabitants", for the Neodesha Post Office in 1938.Taught at the school of the National Serigraph.