Aaron Harry Gorson painted powerful and dramatic night scenes of Pittsburgh's steel mills in the early 1900s. A pioneer industrial landscape artist, Gorson was partial to the nighttime beauty of industrial Pittsburgh and the magic of the glowing streams of molten iron and steel flowing from the blast furnaces and open hearths and their effects on river waters and night skies. He painted dozens of powerful nocturnes featuring the vast Jones and Laughlin mills located on both sides of the Monongahela River. Gorson came to Philadelphia from Lithuania in 1890 at the age of eighteen and studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and then in Paris. He returned from Paris to Pittsburgh where he lived and painted until the early 1920s. Fire in the Night Sky is a celebration of Gorson's life work and the first complete biography of the artist. Author Maxwell Perkins King sets thirty-nine Gorson paintings within the epic story of place and time: the development of the Pittsburgh steel industry and how the industrial and technological achievements of that era changed Pittsburgh and the world. To show Gorson's full range and establish his place in American art, King includes daytime river scenes and paintings from his later career in New York City. Gorson's paintings of the mills were highly prized by collectors during the last thirty years of his life. He is remembered today for his achievements in the genre of urban landscape art. Gorson is widely exhibited in major American art museums, including the Corcoran Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and National Academy of Design, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and held in numerous private collections.
Maxwell King is former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and president of the Heinz Endowments and the Pittsburgh Foundation. He is the author of American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane and the New York Times bestseller The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers. King lives in the Pittsburgh area.
"Even with all the technological and environmental improvements that have occurred in the century since Gorson worked his magic, the majesty of this magnificent and violent industrial process of making iron and steel leaves an indelible impression. I have seen it in person many times, but it is fleeting; Gorson's brilliance captures that majesty for the ages." --John P. Surma, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, United States Steel Corporation "Fire in the Night Sky is not only the biography of a remarkable artist, it is also the story of Pittsburgh and the rise and fall of the era of Big Steel that shaped the city, the nation, and the modern world. Through Aaron Gorson's life and work, Max King traces a compelling narrative of industry and entrepreneurship, of rivers and mills, of workers and visionaries, and of steel's enduring imprint on Pittsburgh's identity. One of Pennsylvania's leading artists of the 20th century, Gorson is regarded as a foundational figure in American industrial art. This book is essential reading: a vital contribution to understanding an artist, a genre, and a region that changed the world." --Silvia Filippini-Fantoni, PhD, Richard M. Scaife Director/Chief Executive Officer, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art
