Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania from the collection of Center Museum California Center for the Arts,

Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, 1936

Ink On Paper

17.25 x 25 in (43.82 x 63.5 cm)

The selection of works by Harry Sternberg owned by the California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum are an excellent representation of many of the series completed by Sternberg over the course of his impressive artistic career. "Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania" represents Sternberg's powerful early drawings down in situ at the coal and steel towns he visited in Pennsylvania as a result of a 1936 Guggenheim Fellowship.

After serving many years as an important instructor at New York's Art Students League (1933-1966), Sternberg settled in Escondido, CA. While the themes and styles of his prints and paintings have evolved over the years, his commitment to hard and continuous work remained constant over the course of his career. Sternberg worked very closely with the CCAE Museum staff, particularly Ellen Fleurov, during the planning of the exhibition "No Sun Without Shadow: The Art of Harry Sternberg." It is due to this close and lasting relationship that the artist gifted five works to the Museum.

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From Center Museum California Center for the Arts, Escondido

Therman Statom

Dientos de Naturalesa, 2006

Glass, grease pencil, paint, paper, graphite, mirror

138 x 74 x 14 in (350.52 x 187.96 x 35.56 cm)
Therman Statom

Study for commission for the Center Museum, 2005

Glass, newsprint, copperfoil, grease pencil, paint, graphite

80 x 56 in (203.2 x 142.24 cm)
Lynn Schuette

Crossfire/Truth, 1993

Serigraph

20 x 16 in (50.8 x 40.64 cm)
Ernest Silva

Untitled, 1991

Painted wood

28 x 35.125 x 4 in (71.12 x 89.22 x 10.16 cm)
Harry Sternberg

Desert Shadows, c. 1989

Acrylic with gold and silver leaf on panel

35.875 x 48 in (91.12 x 121.92 cm)
Harry Sternberg

Starry Night, c. 1958

Power tool woodcut

34.625 x 17.875 in (87.95 x 45.4 cm)
John Sennhauser

CURVIANGULAR No. 5, 1949

Oil On Canvas

20 x 29.875 in (50.8 x 75.88 cm)
Harry Sternberg

Man and War, 1941

Etching and aquatint

21.625 x 13.875 in (54.93 x 35.24 cm)

View All Artworks

About the artist

Harry Sternberg

American

1904–2001

Harry Sternberg, born in 1904 in New York City, was a painter, lithographer, muralist, and educator. He was interested in art from a young age and would take free classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Sternberg began to study at the Art Students League in New York in 1922, and about ten years later he joined the staff team. He was mainly interested in printmaking, but later in life took interest in painting and murals, having exhibitions in galleries such as The Whitney Museum of American Art. Growing up during the Great Depression, he was able to capture the despair and inequalities of the human experience which was a heavy influence on his art, and can be seen in his industrial paintings and drawings. Sternberg lived a full and meaningful life, fighting for what he believed in and teaching students at the Art Students League for 35 years until he retired, and later died at the age of 97 in 2001.

Sullivan Goss. (n.d.). Harry Sternberg (1904-2001). Sullivan Goss. Retrieved April 15, 2022,
from https://www.sullivangoss.com/artists/harry-sternberg-1904-2001

Additional Details

Additional Artworks

Dientos de Naturalesa, 2006

Study for commission for the Center Museum, 2005

Crossfire/Truth, 1993

Untitled, 1991

Desert Shadows, c. 1989

Starry Night, c. 1958

CURVIANGULAR No. 5, 1949

Man and War, 1941

About the artist

Harry Sternberg