Description:
Bird's eye view of city street with buildings flanking both sides; city; architecture
Label Text:
Landeck initially trained as an architect, pursuing art only on an amateur basis. After his graduation from Columbia in 1928 and a year-and-a-half European sojourn with his new wife, he returned to New York to begin his career, a plan that was changed by the 1929 stock market crash and the collapse of the building industry. He had already found a gallery for his work and proceeded to pursue both his art and teaching.
In 1934 Landeck, his fellow printmaker Martin Lewis, and the lithographic printer George C. Miller opened the School for Printmakers in Miller's studio on 14th Street in New York. Although the venture only lasted a few years, it cemented the life long friendship between Landeck and Lewis, both of whom would create richly printed drypoints of New York City. Their works, however, were entirely dissimilar. Lewis preferred atmospheric renderings of city residents at dusk and/or night time (as seen in Glow of the City), while Landeck was attracted exclusively to buildings.
Landeck's New York prints often focus on the architecture of the city as seen from very extreme vantage points, such as the bird's eye view of Manhattan Canyon. The skyscrapers in this image are reduced to flattened geometric forms, punctuated by square windows that loom over streets populated by ant-like figures.
Subjects:
drypoints (prints) Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2004.48 |
