Weyhe Building (Primary Title)
Howard Cook, American, 1901 - 1980 (Artist)
The modernist and regionalist artist Howard Cook learned printmaking from Joseph Pennell, who is also featured in this exhibition. Living in New York City in the late 1920s and 1930s, Cook gravitated to urban construction projects as subject matter for his art. The artist was long represented by Weyhe Gallery, located on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, which actively promoted American and Mexican printmaking from the 1920s through the 1940s. Cook produced this nocturne image of the gallery’s facade for the firm’s 1929 Christmas card. The stark, vertical labyrinth of looming skyscrapers also recur in Precisionist prints by Charles Sheeler, Samuel Margolies, and Armin Landeck, but Cook humanizes his image with the figures in front—one with an umbrella, looking in, and one taking shelter from the rain, in the portal. He also provides a clear view into the gallery building.
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