Art Front - by John P Murphy (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A reframing of the era when printmaking emerged as a powerful force for social justice across the United States

This publication spotlights a generation of US artists forged in the crucibles of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and the threat of fascism, external pressures that encouraged artists to organize. Over the course of the 1930s, artists moved from solitude to solidarity, drawing inspiration from the rising labor movement to envision a new role for themselves in society. Rejecting the dictum "art for art's sake" and elitist museums and academies, politically awakened artists reimagined art as a weapon to fight poverty, racism, xenophobia, and fascism. Prints--accessible, affordable, mobile, and intertwined with a history of agitprop posters, broadsides, and political cartoons--were consistently their weapon of choice. Artist organizations connected activist artists in the United States to the Soviet Union, Mexico, Latin America, and Western Europe. Reflecting the breadth and complexity of American art, the book features printmakers from diverse backgrounds from throughout the United States as well as from Mexico and Germany.

The book:

• Expands our understanding of the period by situating US printmakers in a global context
• Sheds new light on a period of technical innovation and democratization in printmaking
• Recovers period debates about revolutionary art, American history, and national character that resonate today

Distributed for the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibition schedule:

Philadelphia Museum of Art

(July 10-November 28, 2027)

About the Author

John P. Murphy is the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Laurel Garber is the Park Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.