“A beautifully articulated synthesis of strong personal visions and an extraordinary command of black-and-white lithography remained constant. His prints have withstood the inevitable fluctuations of fashion and taste, and today are deservedly appreciated by both connoisseurs and a new generation as among the finest created in twentieth-century America.”
—Janet Flint, The Prints of Louis Lozowick: A Catalogue Raisonné, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1982.
Born in Russia in 1892, Lozowick came to this country at the age of 14 to join his brother in New York City. By 1919 he had attended art school, finished college, served in the army, and traveled throughout the United States visiting major cities which would later become subjects of his work. From 1919 to 1924 Lozowick lived and traveled throughout Europe, staying in Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. While in Berlin he became friends with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitsky, and the avant-garde Russian artists affiliated with the November-gruppe. On his return to New York in 1924 he joined the executive board of the New Masses and exhibited his machine age drawings, the ‘Machine Ornament’ series in the 1926 exhibition of Katherine Dreier’s Société Anonyme; three years later he made his first prints.
Having assimilated European Constructivist and Cubist theories, and the Bauhaus manifesto promoting the integration of applied and fine art, Lozowick was inspired to present the rapidly growing New York City skyline with its monumental skyscrapers as modern symbols of optimism. Like many other Depression-era artists, he identified closely with the common worker and valued the consummate craft and workmanship dictated by the printmaking process. His versatility and range of interests were exemplified by his stage sets for the 1926 production of Georg Kaiser’s play “Gas,” the first Constructivist production seen in America. A year later, his images and essay were centerpieces in the pivotal 1927 Machine Age Exposition in New York. Lozowick’s first solo exhibition of lithographs depicting primarily soaring urban cityscapes and industrial scenes was mounted by the renowned Weyhe Gallery in 1929.
Assigned to the WPA New York Graphic Arts Division in 1935, he left in 1936 to accept a commission from the prestigious Treasury Relief Art Project for two large oil paintings for the Post Office at 33rd Street in Manhattan. His preliminary lithographic studies for the paintings are among his most compelling images of New York skyscraper and bridge forms.
Returning to the Project in 1938, Lozowick experimented with various printmaking mediums, including wood engraving, drypoint, and screen printing, until the end of his appointment in 1940. During the next three decades, encouraged by Carl Zigrosser of the Weyhe Gallery, he devoted himself primarily to lithography, mounting several solo exhibitions at major New York galleries, and a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972.
Posthumous solo and group exhibitions of Lozowick’s work include the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2001), de Young Museum (2007), British Museum (2008), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2015), Whitney Museum of American Art (2015), Brooklyn Museum of Art (2015), and the Palmer Museum of Art (2019).
Louis Lozowick’s graphic works are held in numerous prominent museum collections including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Cornell University Library, Harvard Art Museums, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Walker Art Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
