Philip Evergood, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden sought to use their art to expose privilege and pretense, demand social justice, and issue a call for major alterations in the prevailing socioeconomic system.

Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988) was a leading member of the Social Realist movement that flourished from the 1930s through the 1950s. Motivated by the belief that asserting social consciousness and protest through art could effect significant positive change, Gwathmey and fellow Social Realists such as Ben Shahn, Philip Evergood, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden sought to use their art to expose privilege and pretense, demand social justice, and issue a call for major alterations in the prevailing socioeconomic system.

Gwathmey was an eighth-generation Virginian of Welsh heritage, and throughout his life his main artistic themes were race relations and his native South. He is perhaps best remembered as the first white American painter to depict African Americans in an unromanticized, respectful manner. His work illuminated the inherent dignity of the tenant farmers and sharecroppers who were his subjects and affirmed the significance of community and the cohesion of family life in black culture.

Gwathmey's unique style utilized a deliberate two-dimensional flatness highlighted with deep and vivid colorslike.

Introduction

ONE From Out of the South

TWO Poll Tax Country

THREE Bread and Circuses

FOUR Painting of a Smile

FIVE City Scape

SIX The Observer

SEVE NHomo Sapiens, Late Twentieth Century

EIGHT End of the Season

Chronology

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index