Social Realism
Started: 1929
Ended: Late 1950s
DO NOT MISS ON
THE ART STORY
 | Harlem Renaissance Movement Page |
 | Mexican Muralism Movement Page |
 | Socialist Realism Movement Page |
 | American Art Definition Page |
KEY ARTISTS
 | William Gropper Quick View Further External Info  |
| William Gropper |  |
| William Gropper was a New York City born cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist. Gropper had radical political views, contributing art to magazines that perpetuated his ideas, such as The Masses, The Liberator, and The Revolutionary Age. Unsurprisingly, many of his works are categorized as part of the Social Realism movement. Further External Info | ||
 | Ben Shahn Quick View Artist Page |
| Ben Shahn | |
| Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist and painter. Inspired by the European Expressionists and Fauves, as well as muralists like Diego Rivera, Shahn's Social Realist paintings and murals reflected his leftist political views, focusing on themes like urban life, immigration and organized labor. Art Story: Ben Shahn Artist Page | ||
 | Isamu Noguchi Quick View Artist Page |
| Isamu Noguchi | |
| Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese-American modern artist. best known for his organic, biomorphic sculpture works, Noguchi was also a furniture designer and landscape artist. Art Story: Isamu Noguchi Artist Page | ||
 | Raphael Soyer Quick View Artist Page |
| Raphael Soyer | |
| Raphael Soyer was a painter, draftsman, printmaker, and writer, whose work is commonly associated with Social Realism and focusing on contemporary scenes of New York City's streets, subways, salons, and artists' studios. Art Story: Raphael Soyer Artist Page | ||
 | Philip Evergood Quick View Further External Info |
| Philip Evergood | |
| Philip Evergood was an American artist known for his large-scale printmaking and association with the Works Progress Administration. Many of his works can be classified as belonging to the Social Realist movement. Further External Info | ||
 | Jacob Lawrence Quick View Artist Page |
| Jacob Lawrence | |
| Jacob Lawrence was an African-American painter who created compelling stories of African American experiences and the history of the United States. Art Story: Jacob Lawrence Artist Page | ||
"To me propaganda is a holy word."
Summary of Social Realism
The Social Realist political movement and artistic explorations flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, a time of global economic depression, heightened racial conflict, the rise of fascist regimes internationally, and great optimism after both the Mexican and Russian revolutions. Social Realists created figurative and realistic images of the "masses," a term that encompassed the lower and working classes, labor unionists, and the politically disenfranchised. American artists became dissatisfied with the French avant-garde and their own isolation from greater society, which led them to search for a new vocabulary and a new social importance; they found their purpose in the belief that art was a weapon that could fight the capitalist exploitation of workers and stem the advance of international fascism. The art period is quite distinct from the Soviet Socialist Realism that was the dominant style in Stalin's post-revolutionary Russia.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
During the 1920s, American artists searched for a greater importance within society. The presence of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco in New York City, together with the widespread teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, served as inspiration to the emerging artists. Later, with the lingering effects of the Great Depression of 1929, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided many struggling artists with patronage, a sense of community, and the mandate to paint realistically. Within the above historical context, a very large and diverse group of artists later called the Social Realists joined together to publish magazines, organize unions, convene artists' congresses, and publicly agitate for the importance of their revolutionary work, the role of the artist within society, and radical anti-capitalistic change for America.
Important Art and Artists of Social Realism | |
 Artwork Images | Cover image for the New Masses (1933)Artist: William Gropper Artwork description & Analysis: Committed to Marxism and communism, William Gropper drew vast numbers of illustrations for such radical publications as the New Masses and the Communist Party's Daily Worker. Wanting to reach the greatest number of working people, Gropper and others created prints and graphics for radical magazines, which were easy to distribute. Here, Gropper engaged the revolutionary visual rhetoric of the monumental, triumphant worker who both ideologically and physically dominates the puny clerics and capitalists in the lower left corner. Religion, in cahoots with capital, seeks in vain to contain and repress America's worker who is represented almost as a King Kong figure breaking free of his chains; the movie King Kong debuted in 1933. The idea of industrial servitude and slavery are also communicated by the chain links that the worker powerfully splits apart. Gropper's message is as stark and clear as is his choice of black and white coloration. Ink on paper |
 Artwork Images | Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers (1934)Artist: Aaron Douglas Artwork description & Analysis: A member of the Communist Party, this is Douglas's fourth panel from a series covering the transition between human slavery and modern industrial enslavement; the final, fifth panel was to show Karl Marx amongst African-American workers leading them to a better proletarian future. At the work's apex, a saxophonist stands triumphantly with his instrument held high above his head, far above the green grasping hands that would draw him back into slavery. Yet his triumph is fleeting, as the industrial cog on which he stands will carry him back into the depths of the city and society; industrialism and mechanization are not friends of the American worker. Beyond the man's reach, in the far distance, stands the Statue of Liberty symbolizing the unfulfilled promises of universal freedom. Song of the Towers showcases Douglas's signature style of concentric, radiating circles that are punctured by bold silhouetted figures. Oil on canvas - Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library |
 Artwork Images | Death (Lynched Figure) (1934)Artist: Isamu Noguchi Artwork description & Analysis: Isamu Noguchi's early sculptural works dedicated to social concerns, which align with the artistic Left, are often overlooked in deference to his abstract statuary and furniture design. As compared to other Social Realists, Noguchi employed a more modernist vocabulary instead of particularizing the figure and its facial features. Considered a major early piece by Noguchi, Death (Lynched figure) testifies to the artist's progressive racial views and strong social commitment, which position the sculpture within the concerns of Social Realism. Noguchi modeled the painfully contorted figure hanging from a rope on a photograph of African-American George Hughes being lynched above a bonfire, writhing in agony; Hughes was hanged in Texas in 1930. The horrifying photograph of Hughes was later reproduced in the Communist magazine, Labor Defender, which is where Noguchi saw it. In terms of form, the sculpture is unusual since Noguchi suspended the figure above the ground on a metal armature. Noguchi created this sculpture for a 1935 exhibition organized by the NAACP to protest the national rise in lynching and also to pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact legislation prohibiting such vigilante violence; Roosevelt did not. Concurrently, the communist arts and cultural organization known as the John Reed Club held its own anti-lynching exhibition. While Noguchi's sculpture was well received, some critics reacted harshly to it, revealing their own racism by claiming the artist was not native-born and, in one instance, referring to the provocative sculpture as "a little Japanese mistake." Monel, steel, wood, and rope - The Isamu Noguchi Museum |
More Social Realism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on 21 May 2015. Updated and modified regularly. 
[Accessed ]
