Footnotes

Provenance
Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, by 2013.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, June 18, 2013.

Exhibited
Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Urban Visions: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella, September 11-November 10, 1985, n.p., no. 2, and elsewhere.
Cooperstown, New York, Fenimore Art Museum, Ralph Fasanella's America, April 1-December 31, 2001, pp. 49-51, 176, illustrated, and elsewhere.
New York, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Ralph Fasanella: A More Perfect Union, May 11-June 22, 2013, pp. 20-21, illustrated.

Literature
P. Watson, Fasanella's City, New York, 1973, pp. 40-41, illustrated.
C. Moritz, ed., Current Biography Yearbook, New York, 1975, p. 123.
S. Rodman, Artists in Tune with Their World: Masters of Popular Art in the Americas and Their Relation to the Folk Tradition, New York, 1982, pp. 95, 222, no. 29, illustrated.
J. Rowe, "Painting Ordinary Lives. Blue-collar Artist Ralph Fasanella Paints a World in Which a Sense of Community Matters," The Christian Science Monitor, New York, February 15, 1989.
S. Andrews, "Down and Out On $350,000 a Year," New York Magazine, February 13, 1995, vol. 28, no. 7, p. 70, illustrated.
J. Zandy, Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work, New Jersey and London, 2004, p. 159.
M. Fasanella, "The Utopian Vision of an Immigrant's Son: the Oil on Canvas Legacy of Ralph Fasanella," Italian Americana, Illinois, Summer 2010, vol. XXVIII, no. 2, p. 1, illustrated. (as Wallstreet)
R. Smith, "Ralph Fasanella: 'A More Perfect Union," The New York Times, June 13, 2013.

Ralph Fasanella was a working-class New Yorker and a celebrated figure in the American Social Realist movement of the 20th century, celebrated for his vibrant works that depict themes of everyday urban life in his native New York, labor struggles, and social justice. Fasanella began painting in the early 1940s, adopting a folk-art style formed around colorful and dense compositions. Painted in the early years of his artistic career, Wall Street would become one of Fasanella's first critiques on American capitalism and the harmful effects the system has on both individuals and communities.

Paul S. D'Ambrosio poignantly wrote of the inspiration and significance of Wall Street in Fasanella's oeuvre, noting "As a young boy of seven or eight years old, Fasanella often walked through the Wall Street neighborhood with his brother Tom when they played hooky from school. The aura of gloom and foreboding in this painting no doubt reflects not only the youngster's impressions of the cold, impersonal area but also both the vision of hell that reverberated from his Catholic upbringing and the mature Fasanella's opinions of the single-minded, antihumanistic pursuit of material wealth." (P.S. D'Ambrosio,
Ralph Fasanella's America, exhibition catalogue, Cooperstown, New York, 2001, p. 49) D'Ambrosio goes on to remark, "Wall Street vividly expresses the spiritual emptiness and death that Fasanella equated with the loss of community and concern for one's fellow human beings. The streets are empty save for a lone policeman on a street corner, the buildings are gray and windowless, and the rooftops are covered with grim-looking figures marching as if in a funeral procession." (P.S. D'Ambrosio, Ralph Fasanella's America, p. 49)

In addition to the present work's significance in conveying the artist's burgeoning critiques of American capitalism, Wall Street also bears significance for it's compositional arrangement. D'Ambrosio remarks on this as well, noting that "Wall Street marks the first appearance of a visual device for showing the mass and depth of urban buildings. Maintaining his elevated perspective, Fasanella depicts the buildings as a massive block with a large cleft in the center. This compositional framework not only gives the viewer visual access to everything from storefront to rooftop, but also provides a niche at the center of the canvas toward which the eye is unmistakably drawn." (P.S. D'Ambrosio, Ralph Fasanella's America, p. 50) Fasanella would employ this visual device frequently when designing his compositions and is considered a distinctive quality of his artistic style.