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Louis Lozowick
1892–1973
BirthplaceLudvinovka (near Kiev), Russia
Death placeSouth Orange, New Jersey, United States of America
BiographyLouis Lozowick is best known as the creator of lithographic images of America's cities in a modernist style infused with his subject's dynamic energy and streamlined efficiency. Born into an impoverished orthodox Jewish family in a small village in Ukraine, he drew avidly as a child. Lozowick attended the Kiev Art School before following an older brother to the United States in 1906, at the age of fourteen. After attending high school in Newark, New Jersey, Lozowick enrolled in the conservative National Academy of Design in New York, followed by study at Ohio State University, from which he graduated in 1918. He joined the Army Medical Corps to take advantage of reduced travel fares, making a cross-country trip following his discharge in 1919. Lozowick's visits to cities throughout the country yielded numerous urban subjects for his art in the following years.
Lozowick was back in Europe in 1920. In Paris, Moscow, and Berlin he absorbed the latest artistic trends, particularly the machine-inspired work of the Russian artists known as the constructivists, and he exhibited his semi-abstract drawings and paintings drawn from industrial design and American cityscapes. Lozowick began working in lithography, his most important medium, in 1923. The following year he returned to New York and began an active career as a designer, lecturer, and writer for the radical journal New Masses while continuing to work in lithography. In 1927 he helped organize the important Machine-Age Exposition in New York. Two years later, his first solo exhibition took place at the Weyhe Gallery and he received the first of several important awards for his printmaking.
During the Great Depression, Lozowick shifted away from optimistic streamlined, abstracting visions of the urban and industrial environment to more naturalistic and humanistic images. He was an active participant in such left-wing organizations as the American Artists' Congress (an artists' trade-union) and the John Reed Club, and he revisited Moscow during a 1931 visit to Europe. Under the sponsorship of the federal artists' relief programs of the late 1930s, Lozowick created prints in various media and painted a pair of murals for a Manhattan post office.
In 1943 Lozowick moved with his family permanently to suburban South Orange, New Jersey. Much of the final three decades of his life was devoted to travel throughout the world. Lozowick's later lithographs often juxtapose highly detailed renderings of objects and settings, both exotic and familiar, with abstract elements for dreamlike effect. Indeed, by the mid-1940s he had come to be associated with the burgeoning movement known as surrealism, participating in an important exhibition of so-called magic realism at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In 1972, Lozowick was elected to the National Academy of Design, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective exhibition of his prints. The artist died the following year at the age of eighty.
Lozowick was back in Europe in 1920. In Paris, Moscow, and Berlin he absorbed the latest artistic trends, particularly the machine-inspired work of the Russian artists known as the constructivists, and he exhibited his semi-abstract drawings and paintings drawn from industrial design and American cityscapes. Lozowick began working in lithography, his most important medium, in 1923. The following year he returned to New York and began an active career as a designer, lecturer, and writer for the radical journal New Masses while continuing to work in lithography. In 1927 he helped organize the important Machine-Age Exposition in New York. Two years later, his first solo exhibition took place at the Weyhe Gallery and he received the first of several important awards for his printmaking.
During the Great Depression, Lozowick shifted away from optimistic streamlined, abstracting visions of the urban and industrial environment to more naturalistic and humanistic images. He was an active participant in such left-wing organizations as the American Artists' Congress (an artists' trade-union) and the John Reed Club, and he revisited Moscow during a 1931 visit to Europe. Under the sponsorship of the federal artists' relief programs of the late 1930s, Lozowick created prints in various media and painted a pair of murals for a Manhattan post office.
In 1943 Lozowick moved with his family permanently to suburban South Orange, New Jersey. Much of the final three decades of his life was devoted to travel throughout the world. Lozowick's later lithographs often juxtapose highly detailed renderings of objects and settings, both exotic and familiar, with abstract elements for dreamlike effect. Indeed, by the mid-1940s he had come to be associated with the burgeoning movement known as surrealism, participating in an important exhibition of so-called magic realism at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In 1972, Lozowick was elected to the National Academy of Design, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective exhibition of his prints. The artist died the following year at the age of eighty.
SchoolPrecisionism