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Exhibition Sections: Art of
the People -
The Radical Impulse -
City Life
Capital and Labor -
The American Scene -
Ben Goldstein
CITY LIFE
A sense of change and a spirit
of rebellion both figured prominently in the American art world in the
early twentieth century. City living was a constant theme as artists
found in the nation's burgeoning metropolitan areas an apt visual metaphor
for the modern age. New York City, in particular, became both subject
and symbol to the numerous artists who flocked there to teach and train.
By 1900 it was the artistic center of the country, superseding Boston
and Philadelphia, which earlier had held sway, and even upstart Chicago,
which had hosted the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The National Academy
of Design, the Art Students League, and the Pratt Institute were among
the city's institutions offering art courses taught by Robert Henri,
Harry Sternberg, and John Sloan, among other urban realists who inspired
their students to explore the city's streetscapes and sketch its citizens,
from Harlem to the Lower East Side.
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Central
Park at Night, 1934.
Adolf Dehn, 1895-1968.
Lithograph. Printed by George Miller.
LC-USZC4-6576
© Estate of Adolf Dehn. (14)
Adolf Dehn left his native
Minnesota for New York City in 1917 and ultimately settled there
after years of intermittent travel. Of Central Park at Night,
he said, "My lithographic problem was to try to get the velvet
blacks of the foreground, the intense glow of light and the dull
glow of the sky with the skyscrapers towering, and yet marching
across the format of my paper. This I tried to do by combining
pure washes with rubbed tones, scratching and scraping these down
to light grays and pure whites, and then drawing strong blacks
over the rubbed and washed tones."
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In
the Subway, 1921.
George Bellows, 1882-1925.
Lithograph. Printed by Bolton Brown.
LC-USZC4-6575
© Mrs. Earl M. Booth. (5)
George Bellows imbibed
the realist teachings of Robert Henri and John Sloan as a student
in New York. Although best known for his paintings, Bellows installed
a lithography press in his studio in 1916 and his contributions
in that medium are largely responsible for the growth of lithography
as a fine art in America. Between 1921 and 1924 he collaborated
with master printer Bolton Brown on more than a hundred images,
including In the Subway.
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Small
Town Harlem, 1940
Saul Kovner, 1904-1981.
Lithograph. Stamped: New York City WPA Art Project.
LC-USZC4-6563 (28)
Russian-born Saul Kovner,
who typically dropped his surname when signing prints, captured
the surprisingly rural, small-town atmosphere of a Harlem neighborhood
in this print produced for the New York City WPA Federal Art Project.
During the 1920s and 1930s, following his early training at the
Pratt Institute and National Academy of Design, he maintained
a studio near Central Park, taught art classes, and created paintings,
prints, and drawings of the city streets and their denizens.
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Flag
Raising in Leroy St, 1942.
Kyra Markham, 1891-1967.
Lithograph.
LC-USZC4-6589 (34)
During World War II,
Kyra Markham and many other artists in the United States contributed
to the war effort by creating images that stirred patriotic sentiments
and feelings of contentment toward life in America. Born Elaine
Hyman, she quit high school at age sixteen to attend the Art Institute
of Chicago. In 1916 she joined the Provincetown Players theatrical
troupe in Massachusetts, supplementing her acting income by painting
murals and working as an illustrator. In 1930 she returned to
the study of art at the Art Students League in New York, enrolling
in the WPA Federal Art Project between 1935 and 1937.
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Guts
of Manhattan, 1939.
Louis Lozowick, 1892-1973.
Lithograph. Printed by George Miller.
LC-USZC4-6572
© Adele Lozowick. (33)
Realism and abstraction
blend brilliantly in Guts of Manhattan, in which
Louis Lozowick sketched the underground work he could see through
the scaffolding during the construction of subway lines along
Sixth and Eighth Avenues. During the Depression, Lozowick took
advantage of the unprecedented opportunity offered by the WPA
Federal Art Project, joining the Graphic Arts Division between
1938 and 1940.
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Oct
29 Dies Irae ("Days of Wrath"), 1929.
James N. Rosenberg, 1874-1970.
Lithograph. Printed by George Miller
LC-USZC4-4893
© Estate of James N. Rosenberg, permission granted by Anne Geismar.
(48)
In Dies Irae ("Day
of Wrath"), James Rosenberg created an expressionist nightmare
of teetering skyscrapers, suicidal stockbrokers, storm clouds,
and maddened crowds to convey the sense of panic that overwhelmed
Wall Street and the nation in the last days of October 1929. A
bankruptcy lawyer in Manhattan who also studied lithography under
master printmaker George Miller, Rosenberg recalled: "In the afternoon
of October 28, 1929, the terrible day when nine million shares
were slaughtered on the New York Stock Exchange, I rushed to Miller's
place and made my lithograph Dies Irae."
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Columbus
Circle, 1932.
James Penney, 1910-1982.
Lithograph.
LC-USZC4-6565
© Estate of James Penney. (44)
James Penney was just
twenty-two years old when he produced this dynamic view of the
hustle and bustle surrounding Columbus Circle in New York City,
which he created while studying lithography under Charles Locke
at the Art Students League.
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Waterfront,
1934.
Raphael Soyer, 1899-1987.
Lithograph. Published in The American Scene (New York:
Contemporary Print Group, 1934).
LC-USZC4-6560
© Raphael Soyer. (53)
In the early 1920s, Raphael
Soyer applied the early academic training he had received at the
National Academy of Design to the realism he found in the districts
of New York City: "I wandered all over the city, from east to
west with sketchbook and pencil. There were not yet the highways
along the East and Hudson rivers. It was easy to get to the river's
edge and draw, unobserved, people on docks and piers and naked
boys diving into the water." Without being sentimental or moralizing,
Soyer's Waterfront projects empathy for the victims of
the Depression.
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On
the East River, ca. 1934
Nicolai Cikovsky, 1894-1984.
Lithograph.
LC-USZC4-6571
© Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. (10)
On the East River
exudes the atmosphere of the piers of New York City during the
Depression in a dispassionate manner that offers no illusions.
Nicolai Cikovsky emigrated to the United States from the Soviet
Union in 1923, a mature artist with years of training behind him.
In 1929, he befriended with Raphael Soyer, who had left Russia
as a teenager, and shared with him a desire to express through
art the experience of the common man.
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The
Clinch, Movie Theatre, 1928.
Mabel Dwight, 1876-1955.
Second state. Lithograph. Printed by George Miller.
LC-USZC4-6573 (15)
Hollywood came of age
during the 1920s, and Mabel Dwight's gentle satire, The Clinch,
Movie Theatre, exhibits the subtle humor reflected in much
of her work as she suggests the irritation felt by moviegoers
trying to watch a romantic scene projected on the silver screen.
The American Federation of Arts selected this image for an exhibition
of modern American printmaking at the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris in 1928.
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Hurdy
Gurdy Ballet, 1928.
Glenn O. Coleman, 1887-1932.
Lithograph.
LC-USZC4-6601 (11)
Glenn Coleman's lithographs
teem with the city's inhabitants and, like Hurdy Gurdy
Ballet, explode with urban energy and vitality. Born
in Ohio, Coleman worked as an apprentice newspaper illustrator
before moving to New York City in 1905 to study painting with
Robert Henri and Everett Shinn. A classmate of George Bellows,
he assisted in organizing the first Independent Exhibition in
1910, exhibited his work in the 1913 Armory Show, and contributed
to The Masses.
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Eastside
New York, ca. 1931-1935.
Albert Potter, 1903-1937.
Woodcut.
LC-USZC4-6596
© Estate of Albert Potter. (45)
New York's Lower East
Side was a bustling haven for European immigrants and provided
a wealth of vital urban imagery for Albert Potter and his fellow
artists. Born in Russia, Potter grew up in Providence, Rhode Island,
where he attended the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1936,
following years of art study in New York City and abroad, he joined
the Rhode Island WPA Federal Art Project. His work spans less
than a decade for his life was cut short in 1937 by a fall from
a cliff while he was sketching.
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The
Skaters, 1939.
Lawrence Beall Smith, 1909-1995.
Lithograph.
LC-USZC4-6561
© Estate of Lawrence Beall Smith. (51)
Lawrence Beall Smith
began his career as a portrait painter, but a turn toward lithography
to create such animated compositions as The Skaters, in
which he captures the spirit of a city neighborhood and the youthful
exuberance of children in a fluid realist style. Born in Washington,
D.C., Smith studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and received
a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1931 from the University of
Chicago.
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HOME -
Exhibition Overview -
Object List -
Bibliography -
Credits
Exhibition Sections: Art of
the People -
The Radical Impulse -
City Life
Capital and Labor -
The American Scene -
Ben Goldstein
Library of Congress
Contact Us
(03/28/2000)
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