Stage Setting for ​“Gas”

Louis Lozowick, Stage Setting for "Gas", 1926, pen and ink, brush and ink, tempera and pencil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1976.10, © 1926, Lee Lozowick
Copied Louis Lozowick, Stage Setting for "Gas", 1926, pen and ink, brush and ink, tempera and pencil on paperboard, sheet: 19 1⁄4 x 12 3⁄8 in. (49.0 x 31.4 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1976.10, © 1926, Lee Lozowick

Artwork Details

Title
Stage Setting for ​“Gas”
Artist
Date
1926
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
sheet: 19 1⁄4 x 12 3⁄8 in. (49.0 x 31.4 cm)
Copyright
© 1926, Lee Lozowick
Credit Line
Museum purchase
Mediums
Mediums Description
pen and ink, brush and ink, tempera and pencil on paperboard
Classifications
Subjects
  • Literature — unknown — Gas
  • Architecture — industry
  • Performing arts — theater
  • Architecture — design — stage set
  • Architecture — science — power lines
Object Number
1976.10
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1976.10

Artwork Description

Gas is an expressionist, World War I drama by the German playwright Georg Kaiser about a rebellion at a plant producing poison gas. Lozowick designed the stage set for Marion Gerin’s 1926 production of this play at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and this is one of several preparatory drawings. The artist used America’s industrialized landscape as the inspiration for the set, which he intended “to be the crystallization of a vision fashioned by the rigid geometric pattern of the American city.”

Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009