Ghetto
Charles Turzak - Ghetto
Charles Turzak (1899-1986), Ghetto, 1931, woodcut, signed, titled and numbered (13/50), from the edition of 50. With wide (full) margins on a very thin hand made Japan paper, some rubbed areas in matrix , 12 x 9 1/4, the sheet 16 3/4 x 13 inches; archival mounting.
A good impression, printed on a cream/tan paper in a dark brownish/black ink.
Turzak was a painter, printmaker, illustrator and designer. While a high school senior he won a national cartoon contest sponsored by Purina Mills. With the (relative) notoriety and riches he achieved through the contest he was able to get into (and pay tuition at) the Art Institute of Chicago in 1920. After graduating in 1924 Turzak stayed in Chicago as a free-lance and commercial artist.
He gained a measure of serious fame during the Depression, participating in various federal arts programs; his modernist versions of Chicago sights created during those years are particularly valued today. Ghetto is an unusual, and thoroughly successful modernist/cubist vision of a city neighborhood.
After the Depression he made more commercial art, then in his later years worked again as a painter and printmaker. His art is represented in the collections of the Library of Congress, Yale University Art Gallery, The Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, the Illinois State Historical Library, and other public collections.