Left Turns: The radical art of the nineteen-thirties.

Bernarda Bryson Shahn’s “The Lovestonite” plays on a split in the Communist Party.
By Peter Schjeldahl. "All artists want to change the world, usually just by making it take special notice of them, but now and then they do so out of a devotion to larger hopes. The Left Front: Radical Art in the ‘Red Decade,’ 1929-1940, a fascinating scholarly show at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, on Washington Square, illustrates the most sustained convergence of art and political activism in American history. Some one hundred works by forty artists, along with photographs and publications, tell a story that tends to figure in art history only as a background to the emergence of the Abstract Expressionist generation; Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, et al., shared poverty but not zeal with their marching contemporaries. ..."
New Yorker
Northwestern University (Slideshow)
The Left Front—What is Revolutionary Art?
'The Left Front': A compelling look at tumultuous era
PRINT: The Color Red: 1929 – 1940