Gronk (Glugio Nicandro)
Mexican-American, born 1954
Oh!, 1995 Monotype
(transfer print from painting on plexiglass)
33.5 x 33 in.
Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California

The Fisher Gallery's recent acquisition of Oh! by well-known Chicano artist Gronk represents the first work by a Chicano artist in its permanent collection. By highlighting Fisher Gallery's important collection of Mexican modern masters (Tamayo, Jose Luis Cuevas, and Jean Charlot) Oh! creates a link to the local Mexican-American community both at USC and in Los Angeles.

Demonstrating Gronk's adeptness at speaking both a local and international language, Oh! refers to Edvard Munch's The Scream of 1893 that portrayed the existentialist anxiety in newly industrialized Paris. With his own humorous and enigmatic style, Gronk makes a similar statement about contemporary Los Angeles, but leaves interpretation to the viewer. It could be "Oh!-Ouch, Oh!-No, or Oh!-Wonderful", says Gronk.

Oh! is a critical work by Gronk because it forms part of the first series of monoprints he executed in 1995, when invited by Tandem Press at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to create a series of prints. It was there that Gronk first experimented with monoprints, which became his favorite medium because of the similarity to painting, although run through a printing press. He has returned to Tandem Press every year to create monoprints.



Ben Messick (American, 1901-1981)
Jitterbugs, c. 1940
charcoal on buff paper
15 1/2 x 16 1/4 in.
Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California
Museum Studies Purchase Fund, Class of 1998
1996.2

Ben Messick was a California regionalist painter whose art chronicled life in the urban areas of Southern California during the 1930s and 1940s. He moved to Los Angeles from the Ozarks after serving in World War I. Messick studied at the Chouinard School of Art (now the California Institute of the Arts) from 1925-1932, and taught there and around Los Angeles.

Jitterbugs is a preparatory study for the oil painting (Jitterbug Contest, 1940) and subsequent lithograph editions of the same name. This is one of only four such themes in the artist's ouevre. Inspired by the artist's childhood memories of life in the American South, the drawing depicts a couple in the midst of the popular dance step and a jazz band in the background.

Harry Sternberg (American, b. 1904)
Blast Furnace #1, 1937
etching and crayon aquatint on heavy wove paper
Museum Studies Purchase Fund, Class of 1999
1997.2

Harry Sternberg was born in New York City. During the late 1930s, Sternberg was active as advisor to the Graphic Division of the Federal Arts Project and co-organized the left-wing American Artists Congress Against War and Fascism. He was active in the trade union movement and supportive of efforts to improve laborers wages and working conditions. Sternberg authored several instructive books on printmaking, taught at the Art Students League, and was a founding member of the Committee on Art Education. In 1966, Sternberg moved permanently to Southern California and currently lives in Escondido.

Blast Furnace #1 is one of ten prints that resulted from sketches Sternberg made while visiting the Pennsylvania steel towns of Braddock and Bethlehem in 1936, an expedition financed by a Guggenheim fellowship to create a body of prints, drawings and paintings of American industry and agriculture from firsthand observation. Rather than intending these works as a plea on the workers' behalf, Sternberg was more interested in the romantic theme of humankind's ability to rise above suffering. He aimed to convey the physical and emotional drama, and heroism of the workers' lives.