Carlos Lopez, "Blast Furnace"
June 19, 2018
Carlos Lopez, Blast Furnace, Great Lakes Steel Company, 1947.
In 1946, the Cuban-born Michigan-based artist, Carlos Lopez, was chosen as one of ten artists to create artworks for “Michigan on Canvas,” a project set forth by the J.L. Hudson Company. Blast Furnace, Great Lakes Steel Company is one of the few representations Lopez painted of Detroit that, along with the other “Michigan on Canvas” paintings, traveled to over forty exhibitions state-wide. The overall palette of Blast Furnace is gloomy, but the vibrant orange of what may be melted steel contrasts sharply to the overcast in the sky and the gray of the smoke. The atmospheric perspective is exaggerated by the hatch marks and loose brush-strokes of the clouds and smoke that frame the blast furnace, which itself is a towering and commanding entity with a dark and over-powering essence. In this painting, Lopez chose to illuminate Detroit’s industrial aura, and he did so with an eloquent hand.
Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba and came to the United States in 1919. He studied at the Detroit Academy of Arts and showed his work at local venues such as the Scarab Club, Detroit Artists’ Market, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. During the Great Depression, he found work painting murals, typically for post-offices around Michigan as part of the Works Progress Administration's art project in which the influence of Mexican-mural painting gained acclamation. In 1945 Lopez became Professor of Art at the University of Michigan. He is known today as one of the leading Latino artists in the Midwest of the 20th century, having been expressive in his works through color and subject.
Written by Danielle Cervera Bidigare