Lawrence Edwin Blazey
Euclid Avenue, Cleveland
1930

Name: Euclid Avenue, Cleveland
Brand: Lawrence Edwin Blazey
Price: 15000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Cleveland-born painter, advertising artist, and industrial designer Lawrence Blazey received his professional training at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute). In 1924 he won a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art of the University College of London, England. Blazey returned to Cleveland, where taught industrial design at the Cleveland School. Trained in a broad area of practice very much in the manner of the Bauhaus School, Blazey also lectured on architectural design, product development and engineering, and ceramics. In his professional life, he produced paintings and illustrations for advertisements. As an artist, Blazey is best known for his architectural paintings and drawings from the 1920s and 1930s. He exhibited regularly at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1928–57, winning several prizes. In the 1930s and early 1940s Blazey also participated variously in annual exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Euclid Avenue is Cleveland’s most famous street, and it was internationally renowned in the nineteenth century for its beauty and concentration of wealth, as exemplified by its “Millionaire’s Row” of outsized mansions. By the end of the nineteenth century, the tax valuations of Millionaire’s Row exceeded even New York’s Fifth Avenue. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Euclid Avenue was in the midst of a major transformation to a commercial boulevard and thriving business district, largely due to the efforts of one of its most famous residents, the forest-industry scion Charles Lathrop Pack (1857–1937). An article from 1913 noted in the span of fewer than ten years, the one-story commercial buildings that once populated Euclid Avenue were gone: “In their stead are skyscrapers, great retail establishments, magnificent banks, and a hotel that cost $2,000,000. Much of the land is owned by Mr. Pack and is leased for long periods. He helped to organize the companies which erected the buildings. It is said that his rentals, out of which not a penny is subtracted for taxes or anything else, amount to $100,000 a year” (James B. Morrow, “No sentiment, just plain common sense made him the first active worker for forest conservation,” Sunday Plain Dealer, January 5, 1913, as quoted in Alexandra Eyle, Charles Lathrop Pack: Timberman, Forest Conservationist, and Pioneer in Forest Education [Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992], p. 40). Rendered in clean, architectonic lines, Euclid Avenue, Cleveland is taken from a vantage point high up in one of the street’s towering skyscrapers, looking vertiginously downward to the busy commercial thoroughfare dotted with cars and electric trolleys. Blazey’s Precisionist-like style and daring perspective capture the dynamism and modernity of this booming center of the Cleveland’s economy.

Creator:

Lawrence Edwin Blazey (1902 - 1999, American)

Creation Year:

1930

Dimensions:

Height: 12.25 in (31.12 cm)Width: 16.9 in (42.93 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)

Medium:

Paper,Ink,Pencil

Movement & Style:

American Modern

Period:

Mid-20th Century