{"id":177510,"date":"2026-04-27T19:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177510\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:48:14","slug":"paintable-pittsburgh-rivers-of-steel-brings-internationally-acclaimed-artwork-to-the-steel-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177510\/","title":{"rendered":"Paintable Pittsburgh: Rivers of Steel Brings Internationally Acclaimed Artwork to the Steel City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Koerner<\/a><\/p>\n

PHOTO COURTESY OF RIVERS OF STEEL\u00a0<\/p>\n

From Vienna to Nuremberg to Pittsburgh, artist Henry Koerner has painted his way into the history books \u2014 and onto the cover of 46 issues of Time Magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, Rivers of Steel is showcasing his artwork in the Bost Building in Homestead through an exhibition titled Paintable Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rivers of Steel exhibition highlights the painter\u2019s \u201crestless engagement\u201d with the city from his arrival in 1953 until his death in 1991.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cimmediacy and intimacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition brings Henry Koerner back into conversation with the industrial community he cared so deeply about,\u201d says Mary Murrin, president and CEO of Rivers of Steel. \u201cBy presenting his work at our Bost Building headquarters in Homestead, we\u2019re creating space for reflection on our shared history of innovation and hard work \u2014 who we are, where we come from and how art helps us understand our collective history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paintable Pittsburgh features Koerner\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s former Pittsburgh home, curated the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving with Koerner\u2019s presence every day has made his way of seeing Pittsburgh feel incredibly alive,\u201d Boyce says. \u201cHis work is attentive, generous and deeply human \u2014 it invites us to slow down and really look at the world we\u2019re inhabiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOTO COURTESY OF RIVERS OF STEEL\u00a0 From Vienna to Nuremberg to Pittsburgh, artist Henry Koerner has painted his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6889,65354,79330,2727,73,75,74,65355,289],"class_list":["post-177510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-art","tag-carrie-furnaces","tag-henry-koerner","tag-museum","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-rivers-of-steel","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}