Bridge #2

This work depicts the cantilevered Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge in New York City that spans the East River, linking the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens. The bridge’s distinctive “crown shaped” finials are accurately rendered by Fiene, while other elements of the structure are simplified into geometric areas of flat color. The artist enlists a cinematic feeling in this nocturnal cityscape, drawing on the genre of film noir, popular in the middle of the twentieth century.

Known for both urban and rural modernist, cubist-inspired scenes, German-born Fiene settled in New York City in 1912 and enrolled at the National Academy of Design in 1914, studying with Leon Kroll and Robert Henri before his highly successful first solo exhibition at New York’s New Gallery in 1924. He also exhibited with Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, Kraushaar Galleries, Downtown Gallery, and Midtown Galleries in New York.