Gropper, William

GROPPER, WILLIAM (1897–1977). One of the most important illustrators for the American radical press, William Gropper sharpened his pen against potbellied politicians and bloodthirsty fascist leaders, while honoring the heroism of the worker and the rituals of Jewish life. He also drew humorous caricatures of literary figures and flappers in the twenties for literary magazines such as the Bookman, Broom, and Dial. Throughout his lifetime, Gropper experimented with a variety of techniques including pen and ink, lithography, etching, and painting. Despite his numerous works on canvas, however, Gropper was most gifted as a political illustrator. Critics have often compared his drawings with works by Francisco Goya and Honoré Daumier.

Born and raised in a working-class family on the Lower East Side of New York City, Gropper developed an allegiance to the radical Left in 1912, when at age fifteen he began to study art with Robert Henri at the Ferrer School. He did not, however, start drawing leftist illustrations until 1918, when while working as a feature artist for the New York Tribune he did a story on the Industrial Workers of the World and discovered that his political sympathies lay with the Wobblies. He began producing the illustrations for the union’s newspaper, Rebel Worker, which eventually cost him his job at the Tribune. During the 1920s Gropper contributed political drawings to the Liberator, Revolutionary Age, and the Freiheit, and in the 1930s he became one of the principal illustrators for the New Masses.

The Depression decade marked Gropper’s greatest involvement in radical politics. Although he never officially joined the American Communist Party, he was in 1927 an American delegate to the tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution, and in 1930 he attended the Kharkov Conference. During the late 1930s and Second World War Gropper devoted his art to the antifascist cause. One of his antifascist cartoons published in 1935 by Vanity Fair provoked a minor international controversy. The illustration depicted a series of “five unlikely events” and included a picture of Emperor Hirohito pulling a rickshaw loaded with a scroll labeled “Nobel Peace Prize.” The Japanese government, offended by the image of the emperor performing the task of a coolie, protested to the United States. Secretary of State Hull offered an “informal” apology.

Due to his involvement with leftist politics during the 1920s and 1930s, Gropper was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, accused of drawing maps for the Communist Party. The document in question was a map of the United States with an American folklore hero drawn over each state. Between 1953 and 1956 Gropper did fifty lithographs entitled the Caprichos based on the McCarthy inquisition.

Gropper never gave up his commitment to the Left. After the Second World War he traveled to Poland in 1948 to attend the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace at Krakow as well as the unveiling of the Warsaw Ghetto monument. Afterward he decided to pay tribute to the Jews who died in the Holocaust by painting one picture on the theme of Jewish life every year. Overall, Gropper’s drawings and paintings became less topical after the war, dealing instead with general themes of suffering and exploitation.

Freundlich, August L. William Gropper: Retrospective. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1968.

Gahn, Anthony J. “William Gropper: Radical Cartoonist.” New-York Historical Society Quarterly (April 1970).

Hemingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926-1956. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

Lozowick, Louis. William Gropper. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1983.

Murphy, John. “Blacklisted: William Gropper’s Capriccios.” Art in Print v.3, n.6 (March-April 2014): 10-14.

Steinberg, Norma S. “William Groper’s ‘Capriccios.’” Print Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 1, March 1994, pp. 29-36.

Whiting, Cécile. Antifascism in American Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

William Gropper. Smithsonian American Art Museum. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/william-gropper-1957