Rashid JohnsonGood Love
Art Bridges Collection
Norman LewisUntitled (Subway Station)
About
In Norman Lewis’s Untitled (Subway Station), a quintet of colorful figures is gathered on a subway platform, waiting. The varied palette, patterns, and contours that define the group suggest the racial diversity and economic disparity of Lewis’s native New York City. The artist’s addition of sand to his paint contributes textural dimension and evokes a sense of urban grit.
Lewis was fascinated by patterns of collective behavior. Throughout his career, he painted clusters or lines of figures engaged in shared activity. The artist’s work from the 1930s employed realistic forms to depict the poverty and oppression that afflicted Black Americans, but after WWII, Lewis began exploring the type of abstraction appreciable in Untitled (Subway Station).
By the 1950s, Lewis was among the foremost American Abstract Expressionists. "The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development," Lewis said, "and in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture."
Artist
Norman Lewis
Dimensions
24 × 36 in. (61 × 91.4 cm)
Credit Line
Art Bridges
Date
1945
Medium
Oil and sand on canvas
Object Number
AB.2017.2
Signed
l.r.: Norman Lewis 1 - 45
Provenance
to Joyce Trellis Weingartner and H. Martin Weingartner [1929-2014], Boston, MA and Nashville, TN, 1965; Steven Weinstein, Studio City, CA; to (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY), 2010; purchased by Art Bridges, TX, 2017
Artwork Gallery
1 / 4
Partner Story
Thinking Outside the Box at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg
Through its partnership with Art Bridges, the , in Tampa Bay, Florida sought to engage local and diverse communities by highlighting artworks by artists who have been historically underrepresented in museums. By borrowing five paintings from the Art Bridges collection, the MFA St. Petersburg aimed to expand upon traditional art historical narratives and deepen conversations on race, gender, and regional identity by featuring works by BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists.
