John R. Grabach

John R. Grabach grew up in Newark, New Jersey, where he studied with a local painter and joined a sketch club. He lived in Greenfield, Massachusetts, for his early artistic years and spent his free time painting out of doors, storing all his canvases and materials in an abandoned shack on the Connecticut River. During the 1920s, he worked in New York City, creating colorful paintings inspired by the city’s bustling streets and towering buildings. After the crash of 1929, however, his work changed to reflect the hardships of the Depression and focused on sorrowful people and bleak industrial landscapes.

Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (Mecklenburg, John R. Grabach, Seventy Years an Artist, 1980).