Even the staggering blow of the Great Depression could not stop the inexorable rise of the United States in the 1920s and ’30s, a transformation culminating with its emergence after World War II as the world’s dominant economic and military power.
Artists could hardly help but be affected by the urbanization, industrialization and other sweeping changes they saw around them, responding at first with a sense of awe and later with various degrees of doubt, anxiety and resentment.
A rich cross section of the art produced during that dynamic period is on view in an engaging, museum-quality exhibition that opens Sunday at the Mizel Arts & Culture Center’s Singer Gallery and runs through April 13.
Curator Simon Zalkind has assembled more than 90 original prints, including examples by some of the best-known artists of the 20th century, including Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Elie Nadelman and Grant Wood.
In addition to the quality and inherent art-historical value of these works, the show is important because the Denver Art Museum’s collection is weak in American art from this period, outside that with Western subject matter.
Considerably enhancing the appreciation and understanding of the selections is a commendably ambitious 42-page catalog, with two insightful scholarly essays and ample reproductions of the pieces on view.
The exhibition, titled “Good Impressions: American Master Prints of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s,” is drawn from the 223 such works in the holdings of nationally respected Denver art collectors Frederick and Jan Mayer.
Frederick joined the Denver Art Museum’s board in 1975 and became one of the institution’s key leaders and supporters. He served on the governing body until his death almost exactly a year ago, including three terms as chairman.
The Mayers, who have also collected Spanish colonial and pre-Columbian art, began acquiring American prints in the late 1980s after being inspired by groups of such works at the Dallas Museum of Art and High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
“A few important criteria for the collection were established: The prints would be by American artists, their condition had to be excellent and their imagery compelling to both Jan and Frederick,” Ann Daley, curator of the Mayer collection, wrote in the catalog’s foreword.
Because many of the artists of the 1920s through the ’40s were based in New York City and experienced the dazzling evolution of its skyline, it is not surprising that the city figures into much of the work of the period.
In “The Americanization of Art,” a 1927 catalog essay for the Machine Age Exposition, artist Louis Lozowick wrote:
“The dominant trend in America today, beneath all the apparent chaos and confusion, is towards order and organization, which find their outward sign and symbol in the rigid geometry of the American city. . . . By using an underlying mathematical pattern, the artist could create a new expression of optimism.”
Lozowick’s zeal can be seen in four examples, including the eye-grabbing lithograph, “Brooklyn Bridge Through Cables” (1938), in which the city’s skyline is shown in the distance through the familiar criss-cross pattern of the bridge’s cables.
A similarly dramatic, angled composition, Samuel L. Margolies’ “Men of Steel” (1941), depicts two workers balanced on the jutting steel girders of a rising building, with the loosely geometricized outlines of the buildings below arrayed in the background.
But not all visions of urban life were filled with awe. “Night Shadows” (1921), Hopper’s famous etching of a lone nighttime walker, is suffused with a sense of the isolation and loneliness that could also be part of urban life.
With the onset of the Depression, a group of painters known as the Regionalists turned away from cities, believing the future of American art lay in depicting the country’s essential rural character.
The show contains a strong ensemble of such works. Among them are John Steuart Curry’s iconic portrait, “John Brown” (1939), and three well-known lithographs by Wood, including “Seed Time and Harvest” (1927).
Zalkind has astutely arranged the show into a series of loosely thematic groupings, including a quartet of stylistically diverse, full-length portraits of women. Among them is Walt Kuhn’s Matisse-like composition, “Edith” (1930), and Mabel Dwight’s “Houston Street Burlesque” (1929).
One full wall is devoted primarily to Western scenes, including Boardman Robinson’s stunning nocturne, “Midnight Central City” (1932), and Lyman Byxbe’s drypoint, “First Glimpse of Long’s Peak” (1940).
“Good Impressions” is substantive enough to satisfy discerning connoisseurs of American prints and approachable enough to appeal to the casual visitor. In short, it is a winner all around.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Good Impressions: American Master Prints of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s”
Art Singer Gallery, Mizel Arts & Culture Center, 350 S. Dahlia St. A group of more than 90 original prints from the collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer. Sunday through April 13. Opening reception, 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. Free. 303-316-6360 or
