Born in Austria, Samuel Brecher immigrated to New York City with his family in 1910. He studied at Cooper Union and then the National Academy of Design before establishing himself as a painter of rural coastal scenes and small towns—and later, of clowns.
But New York City is where Brecher spent the majority of his life (he died in 1980), working out of a studio on 23rd Street in Chelsea, according to 200 Main Art & Wine Gallery.
Based on two paintings that feature disconnected figures at different times of day and points on the streetscape, Brecher has something to say about the smallness and internal isolation of city life.
“The Speak Easy,” (above) from 1926-1930, depicts a tenement lane or alley in gritty earth tones. People appear small on opposite sides of the sidewalk, almost like they’re on a stage.
A backlit woman in a pink skirt has her hands at her hips. Is she the disgruntled wife of one of the men under the streetlamp, ordering him to home after a drunken night at an unseen speakeasy? Perhaps the speakeasy is the building behind her, and she, the proprietor, has kicked the men out.
Then again, she may not even be addressing the men at all; her expression seems angled away from them, possibly directed at another figure out of view. It’s hard to tell, but these people may be under elevated train tracks, their dramas made even smaller by the overarching bigness of the modern city.
The second painting, “West Eighth Street,” gives us low-rise West Eighth and Sixth Avenue in bright color. Again, Brecher depicts several disconnected figures, also from a vantage point that emphasizes their insignificance. (And could the rough brushstrokes underscore their rough, turbulent lives?)
Similar to the people in “The Speak Easy,” these New Yorkers seem isolated from one another, despite their physical closeness. Like all of us moving around the city, they’re likely caught up in the challenges of their relatively small yet meaningful lives—internal lives that strangers have no access to.
They’re together on the street, yet miles away from one another.
[The Speak Easy: 200 Main Art & Wine Gallery; West Eighth Street: New-York Historical Society]
Ephemeral New York 