News Bldg., off 40 St.

Max Pollak

Before settling permanently in Northern California in 1938 Max and Freidl Pollak traveled across the United States and Max chronicled their journey in a number of drawings and prints of New York, Detroit, Michigan and Cincinatti, Ohio plus a number of other cities.

This is a pencil drawing with watercolor done by Pollak in 1938 of The News Building in New York, also known as The Daily News Building, was designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, and commissioned by New York Daily News owner Joseph Medill Patterson. Completed in 1930, it was considered a pinnacle of Art Deco architecture when the style was at its height, and was also the first such building constructed in that style in the metropolis. While Max Pollak notes the address as "off 40 St.," the actual address is 220 East 42nd Street. In this drawing, though it is not emphasized by conte crayon as the buildings in the foreground are, Pollak nevertheless makes the building's sleek, stylized form the center of attention, its clean, straight, simple lines rising formidably above the older surrounding structures as a beacon of the future.

Max Pollak, painter and printmaker, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1886. He was raised in Vienna and, in 1902, he entered the Vienna Academy of Art where he studied under William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. In 1912, Pollak traveled to Italy, France, and Holland to study and paint. During the First World War, he was appointed painter of the Austrian Army.

He immigrated to the United States in 1927, living for a time on the east coast where he produced a series of color aquatints of New York, Cincinnati, and Detroit. His first exhibition was at the 57th Street Art Gallery in New York and he was commissioned by Theodore Dreiser in 1929 to illustrate his book, My City. In 1938, Pollak and his wife, Friedl, moved to San Francisco, California. Pollak was inspired by his new city and its environs and produced beautiful views of San Francisco Bay Area. Later travels included trips to Mexico and Guatemala.