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Blanche Grambs
Blanche Grambs, Waterfront, New York City

1935

About the Item

Blanche Grambs, known to friends as 'Grambs' (1916-2010) was born in China. She came to New York as a very young woman to study at the Art Students League in 1934. With Harry Sternberg's class she traveled to the Pennsylvania Coal Mines to draw and visit with mining families -- trips that made a strong impact on her and her artist friends. The conditions of American laborers and unemployed workers in New York were a major source of the material in this period. She was on the NYC-WPA and was one of the infamous '219' artists arrested in the strike of December 1, 1936. Later she developed a career in book illustration. Waterfront (New York City) is a strong example of her efforts to record the world as she found it in New York in the depth of the Depression, while using the kind of experimental printmaking that Sternberg would have encouraged. The few figures at the bottom right are created with an economy of a few strokes and yet tell us everything. The dimensions refer to the size of the image. The work is signed in pencil. Really I would consider this a work in the Urban-Realist tradition that grew out of the Ashcan School.
  • Creator:
    Blanche Grambs (1916 - 2010)
  • Creation Year:
    1935
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 3 in (7.62 cm)Width: 5 in (12.7 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Very good condition for a print of this age.
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU141026675572
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