by Marylynne Pitz

 
Pittsburgh's nightly light show of glowing red blast furnaces and smoky white clouds fired the creativity of many artists, including Raymond Simboli. The Italian immigrant painted "Steel Mill" in 1950, long after his father and many others had captured the city's industrial landscape on canvas. But this image has its own startling, raw beauty, with the mill and a towering blue-gray sky reflected in one of Pittsburgh's three rivers.

For the 10th year, the Post-Gazette presents the back story of a winter painting at Christmas. This year's selection, "Steel Mill," hangs at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg. The oil painting was chosen by Post-Gazette publisher John Robinson Block and executive editor David M. Shribman. The artist's daughter, Beverlee Tito Simboli McFadden, lives in Berkeley, Calif. and has compiled an extensive list of her father's work, including "Steel Mill." "I think that was the Allegheny Ludlum steel mill on the Allegheny River," she said, adding that her father often set up his easel on river banks and taught his students to do the same.

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Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/