Pittsburgh

Born in Russia, Louis Lozowick emigrated to the United States in 1906 at the age of fourteen. Following studies at the National Academy of Design in New York and at Ohio State University, he traveled across the country encountering sights and experiences of the burgeoning nation that would serve as the basis for a series of later works including Pittsburgh, which celebrate America’s industry and urban modernization. The painting forms part of an important series Lozowick made while in Europe which exemplified his contemporaries’ adulation of American culture and technology. In this painting, Pittsburgh’s factories, skyscrapers and steel mills are depicted in a manner that makes them analogous to heavy machinery, as though the whole city has become an engine driving modernity.