Daniel Celentano
American, 1902 - 1980Untitled (Strike scene), n.d.
Not on view
Charcoal on paper
Dimensions17 1/2 × 22 in. (44.5 × 55.9 cm)
Museum purchase, 2000.73
In this drawing, Daniel Celentano places the viewer in the midst of the action, down on the ground level surrounded by labor protestors and three mounted police that are doling out punishment with their truncheons. While the exact strike scene that the artist depicts is not known, it is characteristic of the many demonstrations that took place during the early 20th century.
Celentano was born to an Italian family in Harlem, New York, the fifth of fifteen children. In the 1930s, Celentano received several mural commissions from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Federally sponsored art in public settings typically depicted idealized, uplifting scenes of American life. It was in the small-scale prints and drawings, such as this charcoal sketch, that he could express more explicitly the hardship and violent confrontations of the Depression years.
