August Mosca was an American modernist known for his distinctive engagement with industrial landscapes and machine-age geometry via drawing and printmaking. Born in Naples in 1907, he emigrated to America with his family at age two. He received a scholarship to Yale University’s School of Fine Arts at age sixteen and completed his studies at Pratt Institute and The Art Student’s League of NY. He died in 2002 at Shelter Island, New York.

Mosca was part of a generation influenced by Cubism and the WPA-era focus on urban modernity. His work recreates the industrial landscape with geometric segmentation, producing compositions that are both representational and abstract. He occupies an important place in American mid-century art, with a distinct voice bridging realism, futurism, cubist spatial fracturing, precisionism and a WPA-era interest in labor and machinery.

Mosca exhibited in New York and across the Northeast throughout the 1940s–70s. His works are owned by institutional and private collections. The lithograph shown here, titled Elevated Structure, is number 22 of a limited edition set of 50 (22/50) that were made. lt is part of the private collection of Kaseowitz Gallery. Several other prints of Elevated Structure from this limited edition set of 50 are owned by the National Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Elevated Structure, exemplifies Mosca’s vision and point of view, depicting an urban imagery of elevated trains and bridge structures with layers of diagonal planes, cubist style spatial fracturing, rhythmic shading and spiraling circular forms to evoke the high energy, motion and dynamism of modern industrial city infrastructure.