New Masses (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. It succeeded both The Masses (1912–1917) and The Liberator (1918-1924). New Masses was later merged into Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963). With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929 America became more receptive to ideas from the political Left and New Masses became highly influential in intellectual circles. The magazine has been called “the principal organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onwards."
The John Reed Clubs (1929–1935), often referred to as John Reed Club (JRC), were an American federation of local organizations targeted towards Marxist writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist and activist John Reed. Established in the fall of 1929, the John Reed Clubs were a mass organization of the Communist Party USA which sought to expand its influence among radical and liberal intellectuals. The organization was terminated in 1935.
Louis Schanker was an American abstract artist.
Louis Lozowick was a Ukrainian-born American painter and printmaker. He is recognized as an Art Deco and Precisionist artist, and mainly produced streamline, urban-inspired monochromatic lithographs in a career that spanned 50 years.
The American Artists' Congress (AAC) was an organization founded in February 1936 as part of the popular front of the Communist Party USA as a vehicle for uniting graphic artists in projects helping to combat the spread of fascism. During World War II the organization was merged into the Artists' Council for Victory, which effectively spelled the end of the organization.
Jacob Burck was a Polish-born Jewish-American painter, sculptor, and award-winning editorial cartoonist. Active in the Communist movement from 1926 as a political cartoonist and muralist, Burck quit the Communist Party after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1936, deeply offended by political demands there to manipulate his work.
Joseph John Jones (1909–1963) was an American painter, landscape painter, lithographer, and muralist. Time magazine followed him throughout his career. Jones was associated with the John Reed Club and his name is closely associated with its artistic members, most of them also contributors to the New Masses magazine.
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets, founder and manager of International Publishers of New York. He was a longtime activist in the Socialist Party of America and later in the Communist Party USA. For more than eight decades, his International Publishers was a part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement. He served as a member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution and convicted under the Smith Act; the convictions were overturned, the first by recanting of a government witness and the second by a US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 1958.
Elisabeth Luther Cary was an American writer and art critic.
Abraham Harriton was a Romanian-born American modernist artist and social realism painter in the United States.
Eitaro Ishigaki was an American artist.
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical circles in Greenwich Village. He supported socialism and became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. For several years, he edited The Masses. With his sister Crystal Eastman, he co-founded in 1917 The Liberator, a radical magazine of politics and the arts.
Hideo Noda, also known as Hideo Benjamin Noda and Benjamin Hideo Noda, was a Japanese-American modernist painter and muralist, member of the Shinseisakuha movement in Japan, student of Arnold Blanch, and uncle of Japanese printmaker Tetsuya Noda, as well as alleged communist spy recruited by Whittaker Chambers.
The Artists Union or Artists' Union was a short-lived union of artists in New York City in the years of the Great Depression. It was influential in the establishment of both the Public Works of Art Project in December 1933 and the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration in August 1935. It functioned as the principal meeting-place for artists in the city in the 1930s, and thus had far-ranging effects on the social history of the arts in America.
Andrew Frank Hemingway is professor emeritus of art history, University College London. He is a specialist in British landscape painting of the nineteenth century, which he interprets through a Marxist lens, and the historiography of Marxist art history.
Ahron Ben-Shmuel, also known as Ben Shmuel, Aaron Ben Shmuel (1903–1984) was an American artist, known for his direct carvered stone sculptures, figural granite work and paintings. He worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and he was associated with left-wing politics despite his art having no clear political references.
The Ten, also known as The Ten Whitney Dissenters, were a group of New York-based artists active from 1935 to 1940. Expressionist in tendency, the group was founded to gain exposure for its members during the economic difficulty of the Great Depression, and also in response to the popularity of Regionalism which dominated the gallery space its members sought.
Nahum Tschacbasov also known as Nahum Lichter, and NahumTschakbassoff, was a Russian-born American painter, printmaker, graphic artist, poet, businessperson, and educator. He used many names including Nahum Lichter, Nathan Richter, H. H. Richter, Hanathan Richter, and Nathan Lichterman. Tschacbasov was a member of "The Ten", a group of expressionist artists.
Negro Mother and Child is a 1934 sculpture by Maurice Glickman (1906–1981). The New Deal artwork was produced under the early Public Works of Art Project and later installed in a courtyard at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C.
Nicolai Stepanovich Cikovsky was an American painter. His work is held at the Whitney, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also had three New Deal-era Treasury Section of Fine Arts commissions for public buildings: two murals at Maryland post offices and a set of the murals at the Interior Building in Washington, D.C.
