Queensboro Bridge
Louis Lozowick (1892-1973), Queensboro Bridge , 1930, Lithograph.Flint 61. Edition 50. Signed, titled and dated in pencil.
Image size 13 1/2” x 7 5/8” (342 x 193 mm); sheet size 15 7/8” x 10 3/4” (403 x 272 mm).
A fine, rich impression, on Rives BFK cream wove paper, with full margins ( 7/8 to 1 5/8 inches), in excellent condition.
Lozowick attended Kiev Art School from the age of 12 to 14, at which point he emigrated to the US. In New York he studied for three years at the National Academy of Design, then attended Ohio State, worked as a lithographer, and traveled extensively in Europe and Russia between 1919 and 1924. With this exposure to cubism and Russian modernism, combined with his talent as a draughtsman, he was able to help adapt cubism/modernism to America, creating an exciting new idiom called Precisionism.
By 1930, when Queensboro Bridge was made, Lozowick had already spent several years making superb Precisionist lithographs, proving that this printmaking method was ideal for the movement. But the public was not convinced, and he reverted in the later ’30s to more conventional, easily accessible compositions. Of course with hindsight it’s clear (and has been for about the last 30 years!) that this Precisionist work was the high point of Lozowick’s career, and of American art of the period.