Born in Siberia, the painter Abraham Walkowitz immigrated to the United States as a young child with his widowed mother, settling on the Lower East Side of New York. He studied art in New York and Paris and was attracted to modernism. Between 1912 and 1917, he was part of the avant-garde circle of artists associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291. His best work—cubist paintings and drawings of New York cityscapes capturing the dynamism of modern urban life—was done early in his career. He is also known for his five thousand drawings of the dancer Isadora Duncan, whom he first met in Paris before World War I.
Around the time that Paul Strand took this photograph, he wrote an essay on photography that called for developing an original American art “without the outside influence of Paris art schools.” This…
Born to converso parents and baptized as Manoel Dias Soeiro, Menasseh Ben
Israel moved as a boy with his family to Amsterdam, where
they reverted openly to Judaism. In 1626, he established the first…
Work, tradesmen, shops, the town is there
with old maids polished down by emptiness
on haberdashers’ threshold where the antique sun
brushes off jewels dusty with being looked at.
Dressed up for…