New York, No. 1

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New York, No. 1

Artist Hedda Sterne American (born Romania), 1910-2011

Date1954

Dimensions83 3/16 x 50 1/4 in. (219 x 127.3 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1957.29

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 07

Collections

Paintings

Published ReferencesThe Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 103, pl. 254.

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 330, repr. (col.).

Exhibition HistoryNew York, Betty Parsons Gallery, Hedda Sterne, 1954.

Urbana-Campaign, Krannert Art Museum; Charlottesville, University of Virginia Art Museum, Uninterrupted flux : Hedda Sterne, a retrospective, 2006-2007, pl. 37, p. 58 (col.).

Label TextThe unmistakable shape of the Brooklyn Bridge dominates this powerful meditation on New York City. Hedda Sterne, one of the best known of the women associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, painted this canvas as part of a series completed around 1954 exploring different aspects of the city. New York, No. 1 waivers between abstraction and representation. Sterne uses the bold, painterly strokes of black and blue-gray to convey actual New York landmarks and also the dynamic, kinetic, and dominating feeling of this intensely urban environment. She places the hard, harsh lines of the Brooklyn Bridge in the lower half of the painting, thrusting into the viewer’s space. Above, however, the shapes are less defined, and a skyline of sorts is only dimly and intermittently visible through the soft grayish haze. By composing the painting in this way, Sterne plays with multiple painting traditions, both new and old.