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Union Square

Reginald Marsh, George Charles Miller, and others

Union Square

1933

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Union Square

1933

Physical Qualities Crayon lithograph, Sheet: 400 x 299 mm. (15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.) Image: 344 x 215 mm. (13 9/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
Portfolio/Series From the portfolio "The American Scene, No. 1"
Credit Line Print Fund
Object Number 1935.11.2
Orozco was one of the only non-American artists asked to create a print for "The American Scene, No. 1", the first of two portfolios, with six lithographs apiece, that were published by the short-lived Contemporary Print Group in New York. In these portfolios, the contributing artists addressed various social and political issues as well as economic hardships facing Depression-era America. Jacob Burck’s image shows the arrest of a protester brandishing a sign with the labor slogan “work or bread.” (In this context “bread” refers to easy living.) Reginald Marsh’s composition calls attention to down-on-their-luck men sitting on the base of the George Washington equestrian monument in Manhattan’s Union Square. George Grosz offers a biting lithograph of a World War I veteran with an amputated leg begging on the streets. Orozco created a powerful and wrenching condemnation of lynching through his horrific scene of mutilated bodies hanging from trees and burning in flames. The following year impressions of "The Lynching" were shown in two exhibitions in New York: "An Art Commentary on Lynching" (presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and "The Struggle for Negro Rights" (presented by a coalition of left-wing organizations).
Bought from Contingent Print Fund
Robert Flynn Johnson, BMA, "American Prints 1870-1950, 4 April - 2 June 1974, cat 66.

Rena Hoisington, BMA, "Crossing Borders: Mexican Modernist Prints," November 19, 2017 - March 11, 2017.

Inscribed: Recto: at lower right, in stone: "R.M. '33"; below image, at right, in graphite: "Reginald Marsh"; Verso: none.

Markings: WV: BFK

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