Bronx River and County Center, White Plains is a scenic oil painting overlooking the eponymous landmarks the title suggests. Jumping past the absence of a foreground into the middle ground, half of the painting’s composition is taken up by billowing,…
The Federal Art Project sometimes photographed "artists at easels" in order to publicize that WPA program. Here, Alshets is shown at work on his oil painting Deserted Landscape. Because it traveled to Chicago for an exhibit in the Federal Art Gallery…
A simple still life (perhaps deceptively so) includes as its ostensible objects a Grecian vase, flowers, and red grapes. Whether intentional or not, each element evokes a somewhat different artistic tradition: classical sculpture, informal nature in…
Joseph Biel (1891-1943) was a Jewish immigrant who had witness the pogroms of Bialystock, Russia; Lena Gurr (1897-1992), born in New York, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Both were painters committed to social justice who appear to…