Online Study Guide

Revolution and World War :: Expressionism in Early 20th-Century Europe :: Embracing Abstraction :: Challenging Artistic Conventions :: Transatlantic Artistic Dialogues :: European Art in the Wake of World War I :: New Art for A New Society-Utopian Ideals :: Emphasizing the Organic :: Art As Political Statement in the 1930s :: Émigrés and Exiles: Energizing American Art at Midcentury

ART AS POLITICAL STATEMENT IN THE 1930s

Art has served political ends and addressed political themes and issues throughout history. Events experienced during the first half of the twentieth century compelled numerous artists to speak out and use their art to make political statements.

Depicting social injustice:

In The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, Ben Shahn uses semi-abstract figures painted in flat, intense color to express his emotional response to, and to comment on the social injustice of, the trial and execution of the two anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti.

A monumental outcry of grief:

In his monumental mural-sized canvas Guernica, painted in black, white, and shades of gray, Pablo Picasso condemned the bombing of the Basque capital, Guernica, by Nazi bombers. The painting is composed of fragmented and dislocated objects and figures that combine to express the stark horror, brutality, tragedy, and grief of the event.

33-73: PABLO PICASSO, Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas, 11' 5 1/2" x 25' 5 3/4". Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Elevating Soviet workers:

While Picasso's Guernica focused on an atrocity that took place during the Spanish Civil War, Mukhina produced a monumental stainless-steel sculpture glorifying the communal labor of the Societ people.

33-74: VERA MUKHINA, Worker and Collective Farm Worker. Sculpture for the Soviet Pavilion, Paris Exposition, 1937. Stainless steel, approx. 78' high.

The Depression and Its Legacy

During the Great Depression, artists found support through programs such as the Treasury Relief Art Project, which commissioned art for federal buildings, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which included the varied activities of the Federal Art Project, and the Resettlement Administration (RA), later the Farm Securities Administration (FSA), which provided information to the public about both the government programs and the plight of the people such programs served.

Personifying depression suffering:

The Resettlement Administration hired Dorothea Lange to photograph the rural poor displaced by the Great Depression. Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley shows a starving migrant mother and her three children at a camp for migratory pea pickers in Nipomo, California.

33-75: DOROTHEA LANGE, Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley, 1935. Gelatin silver print. Copyright © the Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland (gift of Paul S. Taylor).

Depression-Era loneliness:

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks echoes the loneliness and isolation of modern life in the United States.

33-76: EDWARD HOPPER, Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas, 2' 6" x 4' 8 11/16". The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Friends of American Art Collection).

African American migration:

The subject of Jacob Lawrence's series of paintings The Migration of the Negro is the experiences of black people migrating North from the southern United States. No. 49 of the series shows the discrimination and degradation suffered by African Americans.

33-77: JACOB LAWRENCE, No. 49 from The Migration of the Negro, 1940-1941. Tempera on masonite, 1' 6" x 1'. The Phillips Collection, Washington.

Regionalism

Grant Wood was a Regionalist who painted scenes of rural life America

The appeal of rural Iowa:

Grant Wood's painting American Gothic, set in rural Iowa, became an American icon.

33-78: GRANT WOOD, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on beaverboard, 2' 5 7/8" x 2' 7/8". Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Friends of American Art Collection).

Constructing a state's history:

Thomas Hart Benton's Pioneer Days and Early Settlers is one of a series of murals titled A Social History of the State of Missouri, illustrating both true and legendary aspects of Missouri's history.

33-79: THOMAS HART BENTON, Pioneer Days and Early Settlers, State Capitol, Jefferson City, 1936. Mural. Copyright © T. H. Benton and R. P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Mexican Muralists

Validating Mexican history:

José Clemente Orozco's Epic of American Civilization: Hispano-America shows a heroic Mexican peasant armed to participate in the Mexican Revolution, surrounded by symbolic figures of his oppressors.

33-80: JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO, Epic of American Civilization: Hispano-America (panel 16), Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, ca. 1932-1934. Fresco. Copyright © Orozco Valladares Family/SOMAAP, Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

The power of public art:

Diego Rivera's series of large murals lining the staircase of the National Palace in Mexico City shows scenes from Mexico's history painted with simple monumental shapes and areas of bold color.

33-81: DIEGO RIVERA, Ancient Mexico, from the History of Mexico fresco murals, National Palace, Mexico City, 1929-1935. Fresco.