A midcentury artist captures the anonymity of the subway in 5 paintings

Bernard Gussow was born in Russia in 1881. But by 1900 he’d made it to the Lower East Side, where he was described as an “East Side artist” in a New York Times article about paintings he displayed at an art show at the Educational Alliance settlement house on East Broadway.

[“Subway Steps”]

Gussow would get his name in newspapers many times, mostly in the teens, 20s, and 30s. Usually grouped with other artists (like John Sloan) of his era, this Art Students League attendee would be described as “interpreting the spirit of East Side life.”

[“Crowded Subway Car”]

After the 1930s, his mentions in the papers drop precipitously. His life ended in 1957; additional biographical information on this midcentury painter is scant.

But his relative anonymity as a New York City artist seems strangely appropriate considering the anonymity of the people he captured in a series of subway images, all of which look to be from the 1930s and 1940s.

[“Seventh Avenue Local”]

Remember the subway? If you’re one of the millions of New Yorkers who haven’t returned underground since the pandemic, Gussow’s images will remind you of what riding the subway has always felt like—a solitary experience amid dozens of other people trudging up and down staircases and carving out breathing room on a packed train car.

[“Grand Central Station”]

I found one reference to a collection of subway images by Gussow in a 1934 newspaper piece. I don’t know if they include any of the ones here, which I find to be haunting in their anonymity and human isolation.

There appears to be only a few moments of fleeting interaction between people: a man seems to give the side-eye to a woman pressed against his coat in the second image; in the third, a woman seated on the train stares up at the man standing over her.

[“The Stairwell”]

“‘Subway Passages’ by Bernard Gussow is an extraordinarily vivid impression of being in a subway. The hurrying hordes of people, impersonal, detached, more like animals than human beings, have been adequately transcribed by the artist with the depiction of only 32 figures,” the article, from the Elmira Star Gazette, states.

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