Minneapolis Institute of Art

Macy's Stairway

Wanda Gág

Date

1940–41

Medium

Lithograph on zinc

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Macy’s was Wanda Gág’s favorite store. Instead of showing us sales counters and crowded aisles, however, Gág chose an empty stairwell, a reference to the loneliness and alienation that many artists and writers of the 1920s associated with modern urban life. The print was based on a drawing made in 1929, when Gág had grown disillusioned with the big city. “New York always makes a wreck of me after the first two months or so, ” she had written in 1928. The prominent firehose and ax reflect the Macy’s preoccupation with fire: when this New York store was built in 1902, every floor had its own fire department. United States, Americas

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