Graven Images and Desert Edens: The Art of Harry Sternberg

HYPERALLERGIC
By Tim Keane

Harry Sternberg, “Creators and Critics” (1985-1986), woodcut, 34 5/8 x 17 7/8 inches (courtesy San Diego Museum of Art)

CALIFORNIA---When Harry Sternberg started out as an artist, in the late 1920s and through the 1930s, he was drawn to proletarian subjects. Across more than seven decades, Sternberg’s art is informed by the sacred precariousness of workaday existence. These existences are occasionally embellished by fantasy but they exude a robust physicality. Distinctively American, Sternberg’s figures radiate energy even as they are dramatically constrained by larger forces — amoral capitalism or perhaps just the godless universe — within which human beings create, and surrender, their fates. [link]


San Diego Museum of Art: "East Coast, West Coast and In Between: Harry Sternberg and America" (Ends May 8, 2016);  1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA; 619.232.7931; sdmart.org