Norman Lewis

Untitled (Subway Station)

In Norman Lewis’s Untitled (Subway Station), a quintet of colorful figures is gathered on a subway platform, waiting. The varied palette, patterns, and contours that define the group suggest the racial diversity and economic disparity of Lewis’s native New York City. The artist’s addition of sand to his paint contributes textural dimension and evokes a sense of urban grit.

Lewis was fascinated by patterns of collective behavior. Throughout his career, he painted clusters or lines of figures engaged in shared activity. The artist’s work from the 1930s employed realistic forms to depict the poverty and oppression that afflicted Black Americans, but after WWII, Lewis began exploring the type of abstraction appreciable in Untitled (Subway Station).

By the 1950s, Lewis was among the foremost American Abstract Expressionists. "The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development," Lewis said, "and in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture."