Bill Rakocy 1948 Watercolor Painting "Hot Slag Dump Ground"

Item Details

William “Bill” Rakocy (Texas/Ohio, 1924 – 2015)
Hot Slag Dump Ground, 1948
Watercolor on paper
Signed to lower right
Titled and signed again to verso under backing; photograph of this is attached to verso
Extensive printed information about Brown’s Dump and hot slag dumping is attached

A 1948 watercolor painting on paper by listed American artist and illustrator William ‘Bill’ Rakocy (Texas/Ohio, 1924 – 2015), titled Hot Slag Dump Ground. The painting is signed and dated to the lower right and is presented behind glass in a frame with a hanging wire to the verso. Information about both Rakocy and the dump are attached to the verso.

The painting depicts a view of train car dumping hot slag waste on Brown’s Dump in West Mifflin, PA. For over 50 years, beginning in 1913, Union Railroad slag trains made the trip from steel mills across Pennsylvania to this dumping ground, where molten waste was ‘poured down the hillside like a river of volcanic lava.’ By the 1960s, the waste had created a man-made mountain that was over 200 feet tall and covered 130 city blocks.

Rakocy studied at the Kansas City Art Institute after serving in the Navy for 3 years. He moved to El Paso, Texas in 1948, where he worked as the Director of the El Paso Museum of Art and became well-known in the Southwestern art scene.

Condition

- paper is slightly discolored with age. Long creases mark paper. Paint extends onto paper backing of piece. Faint water damage to upper left corner of piece.

Dimensions

- measures frame.

Item #

18CIN517-076