Factory (Primary Title)
Charles William Smith, American, 1893 - 1987 (Artist)
On the heels of the Great Depression, President Calvin Coolidge, recognizing the role of industrial labor in national prosperity, commented, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple.” Undated but almost certainly produced in the early or mid-1930s, this print features blue pigment at the top, suggesting smoke and hence a productive factory. The lack of individuals suggests the Depression years of the 1930s, when as many as 25 percent of the nation’s workers were unemployed (with even higher numbers in the South and among women and minorities).
An innovator in color-woodblock printmaking, Charles William Smith here uses the “block painting” technique (which he is credited with inventing) to emphasize the flattened planes and pronounced contours of the industrial landscape. The rooftops and bases of these structures join the foreground railroad tracks in creating linear perspective, leading the eye to the background factory buildings. Smith was born in Lofton, Virginia, and spent much of his life in Charlottesville.
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