Detroit: Penobscot Building and City Hall

Max Pollak

Although editioned at 100 Pollak indicated that only around 15 impressions were printed. Like many printmakers during the Depression and later he set the edition high, just in case the print was popular but only printed a few in order to save time and the expense of paper.

This view of Detroit shows the old city hall designed in the Italian Renaissance revival architectural style. This three story City Hall was built in 1871 and demolished in 1961. The forty-seven story Penobscot Building rises above the other skyscrapers. It was built in 1905 and remains a premier location for commercial offices in downtown Detroit.

Max Pollak was born in Czechoslavakia and raised and educated in Vienna, Austria. A printmaker with a long and productive career, his intaglio subjects included genre, land and cityscapes, and portraits from throughout Europe, the Holy Land, the United States, and Latin America.

In the 1930s many of Pollak's European paintings and prints were confiscated by the Nazis, who considered them "degenerate" because he was Jewish.