Collection Spotlight: February, 2026

Manhattan Rooftop in the Moonlight

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Though the subjects he focused on were simple, printmaker Armin Landeck’s artwork was passionate and bold. Trained as an architect, the artist devoted his life to etching, creating his first print in 1927 on a used press that he purchased upon graduation from Columbia University in New York City.

Following a journey to Europe in 1928, Landeck produced a series of thirty-six drypoint etchings and aquatints of European scenes. During his travels Landeck was inspired by the work of the Old Masters. He sketched and developed etchings whenever he had an opportunity to use an etching press. He was greatly interested in the Cubist art he saw in Paris, and demonstrated this fascination in some of his early compositions.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Landeck’s imagery shifted to scenes of New York City, where he was studying, as well as rural Cornwall, Connecticut. While in New York, he took classes at the Art Students League, visited museums and galleries, and continued experimenting with printmaking, studying briefly at the Atelier 17 with Stanley Hayter (1901-1988). Hayter introduced Landeck to copper engraving, and the artist quickly became fascinated with this technique. His early training as an architect supported the careful rendering of the city’s buildings and all their details. Manhattan Rooftop in the Moonlight was created later in the artist’s career, and although the print is stylized, it is reminiscent of a much earlier work entitled Manhattan Moonlight, made in 1947. A student of Landeck’s remarked, “I now walk the streets of New York seeing Landecks, when I used to see only buildings.”

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