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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
MINNA CITRON Subway Technique.
Lithograph, 1933. 212x256 mm; 8 1/2x10 1/8 inches, full margins. Signed, dated, titled, numbered 17/20 and inscribed "litho" in pencil, lower margin. A very good impression.
Citron's (1896-1991) subjects were often drawn from her direct observations and social commentary. The current lithograph and the same-titled 1932 oil on Masonite painting (present location unknown) is based upon were inspired by the artist's morning commute from Brooklyn to her studio in Union Square. As she recalled "I'd see something I would almost be sorry because I had to sketch it... I always had a feeling that this guy was goosing her... but she was liking it." Women had found independence during the 1920s and, subsequently, had seen these strides reversed during the downturn of the Great Depression. This composition is also tied to the highly publicized and long drawn out case of the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black teenagers arrested and tried in Scottsboro, Arizona for allegedly raping two white women on a train in 1931. In the 1932 painting, the black man to the left of the woman holds a newspaper referencing the case, Citron depicting him in a dignified manner, contrary to the typical caricatures seen during the 1920s and 1930s.
