East Coast, West Coast, and In-Between: Harry Sternberg in America

San Diego Museum of Art

Article by Cathy Breslaw 

Harry Sternberg came into his own as an artist in New York City during the Depression years of the 1920’s in America. Having initially honed his skills as a printmaker, Sternberg received recognition as a ‘Social Realist’ using his observations of immigrants, railroad yards, construction sites and the harsh working conditions of the Pennsylvania coal mines to create his woodcuts, etchings and paintings. Referencing artist Goya’s practice of integrating reality and fantasy, and the humble and grotesque, Sternberg conveyed the despair, social and politically charged issues of the 1930’s.

East Coast, West Coast and In-Between, highlights a life-long art career beginning with his earliest woodcuts describing his childhood activities spent at the Brooklyn Library, time at home with family and his Hebrew studies, then on to portraying industrial landscapes, and the plight of the working man as physical laborer, using a combination of realism, surrealism and abstraction. He would often draw on dark and dramatic themes as well as some with a more dreamlike sensibility.

Sternberg also created murals commissioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury, and taught for over 30 years at the New York Art Students League, however, due to a serious illness while in his 60s, he relocated to Escondido, California where his work took on a distinctively different tone. His paintings began to reveal a brighter and more varied color palette as well as lighter themes. It appears evident that Sternberg, who lived to be 97 years old, centered his career around humanism and social justice and through his mostly highly emotionally charged and dramatic works spanning his career, wanted viewers to gain an awareness of a particularly turbulent time in American history.