Western Pennsylvania's one-time bustling steel industry is all but a distant memory, but fans of the furnace remain.
For them, there is no better experience at the moment than "From the Ruhr Valley to the Steel City" at Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
Featuring 40 works depicting the steel industry of Germany's Ruhr Valley, it has come to the Westmoreland Museum via collaboration with the Rheinisches Industriemuseum -- Rhineland Industrial Museum -- in Oberhausen, Germany.
The Rhineland Industrial Museum has six locations throughout the Rhineland region in western Germany. Housed in an old zinc factory, the main museum is in Oberhausen.
That's where, in 2007, the Westmoreland's first exhibition to travel internationally, "Born of Fire: The Valley of Work," made its international debut. As visitors to the Westmoreland may remember, "Born of Fire" featured art, music, a catalog and a documentary film that celebrates the history of industrialization in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
At Rhineland, the exhibition was supplemented with 30 paintings, works on paper and photographs from that museum's permanent collection.
Those 30 works are among the 40 on view here. All told, they include industrial paintings, sculpture, prints and photographs that tell of an industry and era not unlike our own.
As viewers will see, the concentrated industrial environment of the Ruhr River Valley of Germany paralleled that of Pittsburgh's industrial corridor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition allows for comparisons of style and subject matter between American and German artists, and contrasts their differences in approach to subject matter.
To underscore the obvious parallels in this regard, curator Barbara Jones decided to display the exhibition in the Robertshaw Gallery on the first floor of the museum, which is adjacent to the Barclay Gallery. In that gallery, Jones chose to display several works from the Westmoreland 's "Born of Fire" collection.
"This positioning will allow visitors to make comparisons between the artwork depicting the Ruhr Valley and Pittsburgh's industrial scenes, as they did in Germany," Jones says.
For example, the painting "Industrial City" (1922) by Richard Gessner (1894-1989) is largely reminiscent of the early work of Pittsburgh painter Samuel Rosenberg (1896-1972), featuring a bird's eye view of townsfolk mingling among row houses that are surrounded by the billowing smoke stacks of steel mills.
The work of Pittsburgh primitive painter John Kane (1860 -1934) may come to mind when viewing "Football Pitch Schalke 04" (1932) by Friedrich Einhoff (1901-1988). If this naively painted scene of a soccer field in front of a steel mill doesn't make you think of the work of Kane, then it will most certainly remind you of Forbes Field.
Willibald Demmel's (1914-1989) "Smelter at Furnace Tapping, Oberhausen-RHLD, Gute Hoffnungshütte" (1952) is oddly similar to the rare few paintings of steel-mill interiors by Aaron Harry Gorson (1872-1933), undoubtedly our region's best-known painter of steel mills from the first half of the 20th-century.
Like that piece, some of the works were executed quite a bit later than their "Born of Fire" counterparts. Another example is "Ironworks 1 from Smelting Works Oberhausen," which was painted in 1951 by Ria Picco-Rückert (1900-1967). With its patchy sky and bold, yet decisive, brushstrokes, it's slightly reminiscent of the work of late Jess Hager of Baldwin (1921-2007), an artist who had a 23-year career with U.S. Steel, painting the many facets of the steel-making giant.
It's also notable that this painting is the only one in either exhibition completed by a woman, as female painters of industry were, and are, quite rare.
In addition to the high quality of the works on display, what is notable about this collaborative exhibition exchange is that the Westmoreland and the Rhineland Industrial Museum have created the first-ever exploration into the art, music and history of steel on an international level.
"The model we've created can surely be replicated throughout the world," Jones says. "Highlighting the cultural heritage of international 'valleys of work' can strengthen bonds between past, current and future industrial centers, laying the foundation for a true international community."
Additional Information:'Industrial Scenes from the Rhineland Industrial Museum'
What: An exhibition of 40 works depicting the steel industry of Germany's Ruhr Valley from the permanent collection of the Rhineland Industrial Museum in Oberhausen, Germany
When: Through Dec. 28. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays, Thursdays until 9 p.m.
Admission: $5; free for children
Where: Westmoreland Museum of American Art , 221 North Main St., Greensburg
Details: 724-837-1500
