Paintable Pittsburgh: Rivers of Steel Brings Internationally Acclaimed Artwork to the Steel City
The new exhibition at the Bost Building in Homestead showcases a range of artwork by the Vienna-born artist Henry Koerner, who spent the later decades of his life in Pittsburgh.
PHOTO COURTESY OF RIVERS OF STEEL
From Vienna to Nuremberg to Pittsburgh, artist Henry Koerner has painted his way into the history books — and onto the cover of 46 issues of Time Magazine.
Now, Rivers of Steel is showcasing his artwork in the Bost Building in Homestead through an exhibition titled Paintable Pittsburgh.
Born in Vienna in 1915 to Jewish parents, Koerner trained as a graphic artist before fleeing Austria following the German annexation in 1938. After emigrating to the U.S., Koerner enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he documented the Nuremberg Trials and the devastation of postwar Europe.
Painting in a magical realist style, his early work gained international recognition after a landmark 1947 exhibition in Berlin addressing war and collective and personal loss.
The Rivers of Steel exhibition highlights the painter’s “restless engagement” with the city from his arrival in 1953 until his death in 1991.
Koerner originally moved to Pittsburgh to be the artist-in-residence at the Pennsylvania College for Women; he chose to remain in the city even after his two-year teaching appointment was up. The city quickly became his muse; in his later decades, he began rendering its sprawling cityscapes in both oil and watercolor, capturing Pittsburgh with what Rivers of Steel calls “immediacy and intimacy.”
“This exhibition brings Henry Koerner back into conversation with the industrial community he cared so deeply about,” says Mary Murrin, president and CEO of Rivers of Steel. “By presenting his work at our Bost Building headquarters in Homestead, we’re creating space for reflection on our shared history of innovation and hard work — who we are, where we come from and how art helps us understand our collective history.”
Paintable Pittsburgh features Koerner’s oil paintings, watercolors, pen and ink drawings, posters and book jackets, demonstrating the breadth of his artistic practice. The work on display in Homestead, just across the river from the historic Carrie Blast Furnaces, explores themes of migration, memory, labor, place and resilience.
The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Estate of Henry Koerner. Rivers of Steel advocate and friend Caroline Boyce, who currently resides in Koerner’s former Pittsburgh home, curated the exhibition.
“Living with Koerner’s presence every day has made his way of seeing Pittsburgh feel incredibly alive,” Boyce says. “His work is attentive, generous and deeply human — it invites us to slow down and really look at the world we’re inhabiting.”
The exhibition is free and open Monday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. or by appointment. It will be on view through July 31.
