1943

Vertical Construction

American (born Poland), 1907 - 1981

Theodore J. Roszak was one of many American artists inspired by the teachings of the Bauhaus, an experimental art and design institute founded in 1919 in Germany that advocated artists’ active participation in the dynamic age of scientific and technological progress. Roszak brought the precision processes and man-made materials of industrial production to art in his machine-like “constructions,” meticulously crafted with the aid of hand and power tools. To the artist, nothing captured the romance of scientific exploration quite like the new potential of air, and even space, travel. Roszak worked as an aircraft builder during World War II, when he made this construction, evoking the futuristic allure of aeronautics.