Harry Sternberg

Harry Sternberg was a painter. He was born in New York City on July 19, 1904 and died in Escondido, California on November 27, 2001.

Childhood, family life, and education

Sternberg's parents had immigrated from Russia and Hungary. The family moved to Brooklyn in 1910 and Harry began orthodox Jewish religious training. At the age of nine he began to take art classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. From 1922 until 1926 he trained at the Art Students League of New York. He rented his first studio in Greenwich Village in 1926 and began his career in etching, printmaking and painting.

Early career

In 1931 his work was exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art for the first time. He was appointed in 1933 to the staff of the Art Students League of New York where he would remain an instructor for the next 35 years. After meeting Diego Rivera, the prominent Mexican muralist, and his wife Frida Kahlo in 1934 he became more politically active in union and socialist causes. In 1935 he was appointed a technical advisor to the Graphic Art Division, Federal Art Project (FAP). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936 and spent the year studying the conditions of workers in coal mines and steel mills. His drawings, etchings and paintings depicting life in industrial America are a powerful collection and influenced his post office mural designs especially in Lakeview, Chicago, IL.

New Deal era

In 1937 he painted his first post office mural: "Carrying the Mail" for Sellersville, Pennsylvania. This artwork was commissioned by the former United States Department of the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, later known as the Section of Fine Arts. The Treasury Department was responsible for the construction and furnishing of all Federal buildings during this period. As a part of the decoration of postal facilities during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, artists were commissioned to create murals and sculptures for postal facilities across the county by the Section from 1934 to 1944. Unlike the Works Progress Administration program, with which it is often confused, the Section was not directed towards providing relief for artists. Instead, it sought to provide murals and sculpture for newly constructed federal buildings from project funding appropriations. Artists were selected to create artwork under this program by means of national and regional competition. For this reason, many of the artists selected were among the most talented artists of their era with the intent of decorating new Federal buildings with the best in American art.

By the time the New Deal Arts Programs ended in 1944 due to the Second World War, 1,200 murals and 300 sculptures had been commissioned by the Treasury Department for placement in postal facilities. Today, it is believed that 1,000 murals and 200 sculptures remain in the Postal collection. These murals and sculptures form a vital part of America's national heritage, as they comprise the only comprehensive public collection portraying the culture and character of the American people within a given era.

Additional works

Later that year Sternberg traveled to Chicago and studied the city’s history, architecture, industry, and workers. He returned to his New York studio and painted Chicago: Epoch of a Great City for the Lakeview post office in Chicago. The mural is a powerful depiction of the history of the city from it’s first settlement of Fort Dearborn to the Great Fire to the life in the stock yards and steel mills and onward into the future. Life for the workers in Chicago’s stockyards and steel mills was graphically described in 1906 by Upton Sinclair in his novel "The Jungle" and the Lakeview mural captures much of this history.

He married Mary Gosney in 1939 and their family including their baby daughter are depicted in his mural for the Ambler, Pennsylvania post office: The Family - Industry and Agriculture. In fact, he was fond of self-portraits and he also painted his likeness into the scientist figure in his mural for the Lakeview post office.

Retirement

In 1966 he retired from the Art Students League and the Sternbergs moved to Escondido, California where he continued to work for 35 more years. In 1990 he published a collection of prints: Sternberg: A Life in Woodcuts, one of which depicts his painting of the Lakeview post office mural. In 2001 his life and work were celebrated by a major retrospective exhibition No Sun Without Shadow: The Art of Harry Sternberg at the Museum, California Center for the Arts, Escondido, California. The catalog of this exhibition was researched and written by Ellen Fleurov the Museum Director. Harry Sternberg died on November 27, 2001 in Escondido.

External links

* [http://artandsocialissues.cmaohio.org/web-content/pages/war_sternberg.html Columbus Museum of Art] Harry Sternberg's "Fascism" (click on picture for larger version)