The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents The Left Front: Radical Art in the “Red Decade,” 1929–1940 an exhibition on view 1/17/2014–6/22/2014.
Todros Geller, Untitled (Factory), c. 1930s, watercolor on paper. Collection of Bernard Friedman.The Left Front: Radical Art in the “Red Decade,” 1929–1940 revisits a moment in U.S. cultural history when visual artists joined forces to form a “left front” to make socially conscious art. In the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and at the start of the Great Depression, artists and writers founded the John Reed Club (JRC), which spread to more than thirty chapters nationwide. Named after the journalist who witnessed the 1917 Russian Revolution, the JRC brought together such artists as Isabel Bishop, Stuart Davis, William Gropper, Rockwell Kent, and Chicagoan Morris Topchevsky—embraced the motto “art as a social weapon” and rejected the idea that “the artist can remain remote from the historic conflicts in which all men must take side.” They took their message to the streets—marching, boycotting, picketing, and teaching—while also organizing exhibitions and publishing their artworks.
The Left Front explores the context and legacies of the JRC and its successor organization, the American Artists’ Congress (AAC) in the 1930s. The exhibition also considers the industrial conditions, immigration, labor unrest, and anarchism historically associated with Chicago, as well as its commitment to social reform through such institutions as Hull House.
– See more at: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/view/exhibitions/current-exhibits/the-left-front.html#sthash.MEiSXbc2.dpuf
