Great Depression Art Gallery
Various images to explore the
impact of the Great
Depression.
How to Analyze Art
What to look for…
Subject
Color usage, light and shadow
Imagery
Background
Details
Expressions and emotions
Context created
The Crash!!!
James N.
Rosenberg, Oct 29
Dies Irae ("Days of
Wrath"), 1929
Brooklyn Bridge Emptiness
 Louis
Lozowick,
Brooklyn Bridge
(1930)
Smithsonian
American Art
Museum
Brooklyn
Bridge is
Falling Down,
Falling Down,
Falling
Down….
AE
Banana Men at Work
Mable Dwight,
Banana Men, n.d.
No Work
Blanche Grambs,
No Work (1935)
Union Square
Reginald Marsh, Union
Square (1933)
Lithograph
The Univ. of Michigan
Museum of Art
Bar and Grill?
Eli Jacobi, Bar
and Grill (n.d.)
Along the East River
Nicolai
Cikovsky, On
the East River
(c. 1934)
Getting Away From it All…
Twenty Cent Movie (Previous Slide)
Reginald Marsh, Twenty Cent
Movie (1936)
Egg tempera on board
30x40in. (76.2x101.6 cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York
Strugglin’ to Survive!
Jacob Burck,
The Lord
Provides
(1934)
Scrap drive…
AE
Lunch…
Joseph
Hirsch,
Lunch
Hour
(1942)
Night Flight…
AE
American Gothic
The Art Institute of
Chicago
Grant Wood,
American (18911942) 1930
Oil on beaverboard
Friends of American
Art Collection
Acquired in 1930
Black Sunday, 1935
After the Storm…
Harvesting
the Crops
AE
Farm
Trouble
AE
Protesting
Lest We
Forget
By Ben Shahn,
Resettlement
Administration, 1937
Gouache and
watercolor in bound
volume
NA
TRIBUTE
The New Deal (Previous Slide)
Conrad A. Albrizio, The New Deal
(1934)
Affresco by Conrad A. Albrizio,
dedicated to President Roosevelt,
placed in the auditorium of the
Leonardo Da Vinci Art School (149
East 34th Street, NYC)
Back to Work…
Harry
Sternberg,
Builders (193536)
Returning to Home
Working Girls
Going Home
By Raphael Soyer,
New York City
Federal Art Project,
WPA, 1937
Lithograph
NA
Bibliography
All pictures in presentation are from:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/artgallery.htm
unless otherwise noted.
American Gothic is from:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/works/ame.html
Dust Bowl pictures are public domain.
Pictures designated as “AE” are from:
Dijkstra, Bram. American Expressionism: Art and Social Change 19201950. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2003.
Pictures designated as “NA” are from:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/new_deal_for_the_arts/celebrating
_the_people1.html