Metropolis No. 2

Born in Siberia, the painter Abraham Walkowitz immigrated to the United States as a young child with his widowed mother, settling on the Lower East Side of New York. He studied art in New York and Paris and was attracted to modernism. Between 1912 and 1917, he was part of the avant-garde circle of artists associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291. His best work—cubist paintings and drawings of New York cityscapes capturing the dynamism of modern urban life—was done early in his career. He is also known for his five thousand drawings of the dancer Isadora Duncan, whom he first met in Paris before World War I.