Jon Carbino (1905-1964) - Escaped Bull 1937 - Lithograph AP1355

Jon Corbino’s vibrant, skillfully rendered action scenes evoke Romanticism with their monumental figures and smoldering colors. Meanwhile, his dramatic, world event-inspired themes—including social conflict in the form of war and civil strife or implied through natural disaster, and contrasts between industry and humanity—captured the Depression-era American zeitgeist. Critic Edward Alden Jewell traces Corbino’s influences to Théodore Gericault and perhaps even the Baroque style of Peter Paul Rubens. He painted heroic animals and people in catastrophic, violent scenes. Life magazine actually dubbed him the modern-day Rubens. Corbino was fascinated with movement, often depicting galloping horses and circus and ballet performers in the midst of lively feats in his characteristically warm palette.