William Stanley Haseltine

Fishing Boats, Venice

1881

Thomas Fransioli’s cityscapes are crisp and tidy. Buildings stand in bold outline, their forms squarely defined by stark light and long shadows. Saturated color permeates every corner of his canvases, from vibrant oranges and greens to smoky terra cottas and granites. Even the trees that line Fransioli’s streets, parks, and squares are sharp and angular, exactly like those in an architect’s elevation rendering. But Fransioli’s cities often lack one critical feature: people. His streets are largely deserted, save for parked cars and an occasional black cat scurrying across the pavement. People make rare appearances in Fransioli’s compositions, and never does the entropy of a crowd overwhelm their prevailing sense of order and precision. People are implied in a Fransioli painting, but their physical presence would detract from the scene’s bleak and surreal beauty. Magic Realism neatly characterizes Fransioli’s artistic viewpoint. The term was first broadly applied to contemporary American art in the 1943 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, American Realists and Magic Realists. As exhibition curator Dorothy Miller noted in her foreword to the catalogue, Magic Realism was a “widespread but not yet generally recognized trend in contemporary American art…. It is limited, in the main, to pictures of sharp focus and precise representation, whether the subject has been observed in the outer world—realism, or contrived by the imagination—magic realism.” In his introductory essay, Lincoln Kirstein took the concept a step further: “Magic realists try to convince us that extraordinary things are possible simply by painting them as if they existed.” This is Fransioli, in a nutshell. His cityscapes exist in time and space, but certainly not in the manner in which he portrays them. Fransioli—and other Magic Realists of his time—was also the heir to Precisionism, spawned from Cubism and Futurism after the Great War and popularized in the 1920s and early 1930s. While Fransioli may not have aspired to celebrate the Machine Age, heavy industry, and skyscrapers in the same manner as Charles Sheeler, his compositions tap into the same rigid gridwork of the urban landscape that was first codified by the Precisionists. During the 1950s, Fransioli was represented by the progressive Margaret Brown...

A native New Yorker, Brosen has spent a lifetime wandering its streets, discovering its long history and witnessing its constant metamorphosis. The city is his muse and his primary s...

Aaron Berkman was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1900. In 1916 Berkman attended the Connecticut League of Art Students, founded by Charles Noel Flagg. Beginning in 1919 he studied under Albertus E. Jones at the Hartford Art School. Berkman was influenced during this time by George Inness and John Singer Sargent and the Old Masters. He received a scholarship to the Museum Art School of Boston in 1921 and then traveled to Europe, remaining there from 1924 through 1925. He spent time in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and Belgium. In 1929 Berkman moved to New York City, continuing a friendship and painting relationship with Milton Avery. He was appointed by the W.P.A. as Director of the WPA Art Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Berkman helped established the A.C.A. Gallery in New York City at 52 West 8th St., the first Artist Cooperative Gallery in New York City. He spent summers on Monhegan Island in...

David Dewey (B. 1946) Reader's Digest Headquarters, 1996 Watercolor on paper Sight: 24 x 18 1/2 in. Framed: 36 x 29 3/4 x 1 in. Living on the Maine coast, David Dewey is a watercolo...