Tuesday, April 19, 2022 – HE CAPTURED THE 1930’S CITY IN LITHOGRAPHS

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TUESDAY, APRIL 19,  2022


652nd Issue

LOUIS LOZOWICK:

PRINTMAKER

CELEBRATES MACHINE AGE

NEW YORK

FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

A midcentury printmaker celebrates machine age New York City

As the machine age took hold in the United States in the early 20th century, some artists took a darker view of the mechanization of urban society—seeing isolation and alienation amid skyscrapers, automobiles, and steel bridges. Painter and printmaker Louis Lozowick, however, found something to celebrate.

“Allen Street,” 1929

Lozowick isn’t a household name, but his backstory will sound familiar. Born in Ukraine in 1892, he immigrated to New York City in the early 1900s, according to Artnet. He took classes at the National Academy of Design, studying with Leon Kroll, a painter and lithographer who often depicted the industry of Manhattan from the city’s bridges and rivers.

Through Brooklyn Bridge Cables,” 1938

After traveling in Europe, Lozowick returned to New York in 1926 and worked as an illustrator for the leftist social reform periodical, New Masses. Influenced by Bauhaus and precisionist artists, he was also producing his own photorealistic, sometimes Art Deco style works—many of which heralded “the power of men and machines,” as the National Gallery of Art put it.

Slum Clearance,” 1939

Lozowick gives us a majestic city from soaring vantage points—the Brooklyn Bridge and the Third Avenue El—as well as forgotten pockets and corners under elevated tracks and along Manhattan’s industrial edges, where the new and old New York sometimes collide.

Though his focus is on how machines transformed the look and feel of the city, Lozowick doesn’t lose sight of the humanity driving the trucks and trains, powering the factories, and building the skyscrapers.

Traffic,” 1930

Of all the images in this post, only “Third Avenue” includes no human form. But humanity is there; someone is at the controls of the train.

Louis Lozowick Subway station.tif A 1936 lithograph by Louis Lozowick. Retained by the New York Public Library.

Louis Lozowick Roof and Sky (cropped).tif

Louis Lozowick’s 1939 lithograph Roof and Sky. Created as part of the Works Progress Administration. Retained by the New York Public Library. Cropped to remove archival photo implements.

Tuesday Photo of the Day

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MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

One of the buildings in the Gyeongbokgung royal palace complex in northern Seoul. The palace was first constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867, it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces.

LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!!

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

Sources

EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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