Study for Parade (Waterfront, Manhattan)
Peter Blume
American, 1906–1992
1929
A gouache study in which Peter Blume stages the industrial Manhattan waterfront as a surreal, machine-like theater, arranging factories, ramps, signs, and pipes into a compact, constructed scene.
You're first struck by the clipped geometry and theatrical flattening—curved ducts, stairlike ramps, a red block of a factory, a water tower and painted advertising stacked like stage props beneath a churned sky.
Dating from 1929, the work fuses Precisionist clarity with Surrealist stagecraft to make the modern city appear as both spectacle and machine, helping define an American modernist vocabulary for industrial form and urban anxiety.
Medium
Gouache on board
Dimensions
20 1/4 x 14" (51.4 x 35.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Accession
30.1935
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
