Chinatown, San Francisco

Emil Rizek

This color aquatint was done by Austrian printmaker Emil Rizek in 1938, while he was briefly teaching at Arts & Crafts in Oakland, California, before returning to Vienna.

The subject is San Francisco's Chinatown, perhaps a view down Grant Avenue. The shops all have awnings to shade the sidewalk. A shipment of some kind is stacked on the sidewalk, waiting to be distributed. The street is narrow and poorly paved, slowing the pace of traffic, while the broad sidewalks are made for the community, with vendors setting out their wares and shoppers from one to the next.

Chinatown was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire and the city tried to relocate it in Hunters Point but it was rebuilt where it had been, in downtown San Francisco. Part of the reason the city fathers were not able to relocate was because of covenants banning any Chinese from living in other sections of the city. Today Chinatown's population is around 70,000 residents living in a 30 square block area and its shops and restaurants are a major tourist draw for the city.

Emil Rizek was born on May 31, 1901 in Vienna, Austria, the son of an electrical engineer. Although his father wanted him to also become an engineer, young Rizek took private art instruction with Anton Hlavatschek and with Carl Fahringer, a professor from the Viennese academy. In the 1920s Rizek traveled to Italy, France, Germany and Holland where he was associated with the “School of the Hague” a group of Dutch Impressionists.

On his first major world trip, between 1928 and 1931, Rizek traveled and painted in Indonesia. On a second trip, lasting from 1932 through 1935 he visited Canada, the United States, Japan and South Africa. In 1938 taught painting in Oakland California, and also painted and etched scenes of San Francisco’s Chinatown.