The wedding

        Louis Guglielmi was an American painter born in Egypt in 1906, but soon moved to America when he was still a teenager. He lived in New York and he was well known there. But he was quite forgotten after he died. His paintings were often commented on social and political themes.

 I am now going to study one of his paintings entitled “Wedding in South Street” painted in 1937.

In the foreground we can see the bride who got here by car and is joining the small crowd of people celebrating the wedding in a particular house with pillars facing a garage type building in the back, we can also see two people looking down on the crowd from the balcony of the house. The atmosphere feels a bit dark. We see characters of all ages probably the family and friends of the bride. In the background we observe the Brooklyn bridge and the sky covered in clouds. The painting was painted by oil on canvas and its style is cubism, precisionism and regionalism with the representation of the Brooklyn bridge which gives us the location of the painting, it shows a specific place in New York.

I feel like the painter captured this moment with the intention to represent the difficult times that people were facing during the great depression. And how people make do and continue to live while the economic crisis brought financial hardship and poverty. It really shows how the 1930s were really one of the worst decades that the US has faced. Many were unemployed and many became homeless.

I stumbled upon this particular artwork on the internet which caught my eyes at first glance. The one thing that I instantly recognised was the Brooklyn bridge because I have seen and studied on it before.

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