Physical Qualities
Etching and aquatint with printed tone, Sheet: 527 x 406 mm. (20 3/4 x 16 in.)
Plate: 353 x 277 mm. (13 7/8 x 10 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
The United States General Services Administration, formerly Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Object Number
L.1943.9.312
This print unite images of coal mining, iron ore smelting, and the miners who risked their lives for little pay to support growing American industry. The repetitive
cylindrical forms of a coal-burning blast furnace dominate the composition of Hungarian immigrant Jolán Gross-Bettelheim’s print. In Miner’s Head, Blanche Grambs captured her subject’s haunting gaze, evoking the hopelessness, poverty, and exhaustion she witnessed during her 1936 visit to the anthracite coal mining town of Lansford, Pennsylvania. Grambs’ Design Steel sets a looming steel mill against a lace-like background of interlinked houses and crosses, showing life and death as close neighbors in a mill town. Elizabeth Olds portrayed three men in a composition that signaled that signaled her support for the interracial labor unions promoted by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a federation of unions active from 1935 to 1955.
Virginia Anderson and Robin Owen Joyce, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA," November 5, 2023 - June 30, 2024.
Inscribed: RECTO: LL margin (stamped in black ink): 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT / NYC WPA'; LC margin (pencil): 'Design Steel'; LR margin (pencil): 'B[illegible] Grambs'; BR Corner (pencil): '21'. VERSO: LR (pencil): '#1696 - gr. I'; C: BMA stamp.
