Painting "343" is the work of Erik Adriaan van der Grijn, a Dutch abstract expressionist artist who was living in Brooklyn at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
The following day, September 12, 2001, he photographed the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn Promenade, showing the Statue of Liberty (extreme lower left) up to the Brooklyn Bridge (extreme lower right) and in center heavy smoke rising to the heavens from what was once the Twin Towers, smoke which lasted for days on end.
Two darkened stripes within the Stars and Stripes solemnly memorialize the towers, last seen against a bright blue sky the morning of September 11, 2001.
This work is entitled "343" in memory of the 343 firefighters who rushed to the burning skyscrapers, ultimately losing their lives in a heroic bid to save the lives of others.
The picture was featured as the catalogue cover for the Erik van der Grijn exhibition "9/11 Un Requiem," at Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires.
In 2011, the painting was welcomed by the New York City Fire Museum (official museum of the FDNY) as the gift of Aimen and Mary Carol Cannon. It may be viewed in the 9/11 Memorial Room at The Fire Museum, which occupies a renovated 1904 Beaux Arts firehouse located at 278 Spring Street in the Soho section of Manhattan.