Louis Lozowick's "Steel Valley"

Louis Lozowick (1892-1973), Steel Valley, 1936. Lithograph. Edition of 15. Graphic Arts GA2007.01716

At the age of fourteen, Lozowick left his family in the Ukraine to join a brother living in New Jersey. He quickly learned English and studied painting and printmaking at the National Academy of Design in New York. Lozowick’s work has been labeled Precisionist (an American form of constructivism) and although he travelled extensively, it is the scenes of the new industrial age in the United States for which he is best remembered. Lithography was his medium of choice.

Lozowick moved to Berlin in the early 1920s where he was a member of the artists’ circle that included László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. He had his first solo show in Berlin at K. E. Twardy Book Shop, which led to a number of commissions as a graphic artist and illustrator.

By the time the depression hit, Lozowick was back in the United States. He joined the Graphic Arts Division of the Works Progress Administration where he was employed until 1940. He also taught lithography at the John Reed Club School of Art and was a founder of the New Masses (and eventually its art editor).

Lozowick was a good friend of Elmer Adler, the first curator of graphic arts at Princeton University, and Adler collected a small group of his lithographs, including this one, for the library. Several are signed and dedicated directly from Lozowick to Adler.