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Louis Lozowick (American, b. Russia, 1892–1973). Tanks (No. 1), 1929. Lithograph on paper, sheet: 15 3/4 x 11 1/4 in. (40.0 x 28.6 cm); image: 13 15/16 x 8 in. (35.5 x 20.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel Zachary Gitlin, 78.54.7
Active as an artist, writer, and critic, Louis Lozowick is best known for stunning lithographs, such as this one, depicting urban and industrial scenes in the crisp geometric style of Precisionism. When he immigrated to the United States as a teenager, he encountered the iconography of the modern Machine Age—skyscrapers, factories, bridges, railroads—that would fascinate him for the remainder of his career. In Tanks (No. 1), Lozowick creates a celebratory vision of a nocturnal industrial landscape with a monumental storage tank rising heroically through a lattice of pipes and scaffolding. The image also speaks to progress through the juxtaposition of an airplane and a team of horses. Mastery of the lithographic medium is evident in the velvety surfaces and subtle tonal gradations, while the simplification of forms and faceted planes reveal Lozowick's debt to Cubism, Russian Constructivism, and other avant-garde styles that he saw during his travels in Europe in the 1920s.
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum