Circuit Breakers

Lewandowski was born to Polish parents in Milwaukee in 1914 and by the time the Federal Art Project came into being during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the industrial subjects he was so fond of were already a part of his visual arts repertoire. Although the icons of industry remained the main theme of his work for several decades, the style in which he portrayed them changed significantly during the mid-1940s. He eliminated the heroic laborers of the workplace in his earlier American scene paintings, and refocused his attention on form and the careful modulation of color. By reducing his subjects to their most basic, flat, rigidly geometrical and carefully contrasting forms, he drew attention to the pure aesthetic design qualities of the industrial icons that left such an indelible mark on him while growing up in Milwaukee.