Ralph Fasanella’s New York Boxed Notecards

Born in the Bronx, Ralph Fasanella (American, 1914–1997) painted colorful works packed with observations about working-class urban life. A labor organizer blacklisted during the McCarthy years, he was “discovered” in the early ’70s when a New York magazine article proclaimed, “This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses.” Although Fasanella dismissed the “primitive” label, the resulting attention allowed him to pursue his art full time.

Fasanella painted worker strikes, exhausted commuters, and streets dotted by protests, barricades, and the cranes of urban renewal. He depicted Coney Island holidays and stickball games in the street. He painted more than three hundred works in his lifetime, always with a critical but affectionate perspective on life for the average person.

Contains five each of the following notecards:
Christopher Street, 1947
New York City (detail), 1957
Washington Square Park, 1981
I Love New York, 1980