Lithograph #1

William Samuel Schwartz

Chicago based artist William Schwartz graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1917 and the Russian born immigrant become aware of Wassily Kandinksky's abstractions and aesthetic philosophy, which began to inform his work.

"Lithograph #1" the artist's first lithograph, done in 1928 is a Modernist, somewhat Cubist, highly abstracted cityscape, drawn in flattened surfaces with the litho crayon. Schwartz's compositions delved into both abstraction and representation and his attempts to merge the two, as in this image.

Schwartz worked in lithography for only 10 years, producing some 60 prints in editions that consisted of between 16 and 73 impressions. He titled them chronologically, eschewing descriptive titles. This was his first attempt at the medium.