The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 2, 2023

New York

1923

Louis Lozowick

(American, 1892–1973)

America, 20th century

Lithograph

Support: Rives BFK mold-made wove paper

Sheet: 40.3 x 29 cm (15 7/8 x 11 7/16 in.); Platemark: 29 x 22.9 cm (11 7/16 x 9 in.)

John L. Severance Fund 1997.141

© Courtesy of the Estate of Louis Lozowick and Mary Ryan Gallery, NY

Catalogue raisonné: Flint 6

Edition: as few as 15 impressions

Location

not on view

Description

Lozowick traveled to France, Germany, and Russia in 1919, where he was influenced by Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism. The result, to quote the artist, was "a new aesthetic approach to the civilization of today---a new plastic interpretation of the machine age." Born in the Ukraine, Lozowick came to the United States as a child and remained fascinated with views of urban America. His ordered, geometric designs reflect the beauty and vitality he found in cities, factories, and machines, stripped of extraneous detail. It was the optimism of the 1920s, the confidence in the progress of a rational society enhanced by the triumphs of science and engineering, that led to the glorification of industrialization. Lozowick wrote in 1927, "...the artist could...harness the forces of nature by using math and geometry in a very precise manner. In this manner the flowing rhythm of modern America may be gripped and stayed and its synthesis eloquently rendered in the native idiom."

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed and dated lower right below image in graphite "LOUIS LOZOWICK '23"; bottom margin in graphite "New York" and "#15"

Citations
Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 60-61, no. 65
Donley, Gregory M., "Geometric Means", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 46 no. 05, May/June 2006 Mentioned & reproduced: p. 4-5 archive.org
Exhibition history

Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; September 17 - November 26, 2000. "From Rembrandt to Rauschenberg: Recently Acquired Prints."

MOCA Cleveland (6/9/2006 - 8/20/2006): "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art", no. 65, p. 119, repr. p. 61.

From Rembrandt to Rauschenberg: Recently Acquired Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (September 17-November 26, 2000).

The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1997.141