| William Gropper | |
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 Gropper in 1923 | |
| Born | William Gropper (1897-12-03)December 3, 1897 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | January 3, 1977(1977-01-03) (aged 79) Manhasset, New York, U.S. |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist |
Notable works | political work forleft wing publications likeThe Revolutionary Age,The Liberator,The New Masses,The Worker,Morgen Freiheit |
| Spouse(s) | |
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William Gropper (December 3, 1897 – January 3, 1977) was an Americancartoonist,painter,lithographer, andmuralist. A committedradical, Gropper is best known for the political work which he contributed to suchleft wing publications asThe Revolutionary Age,The Liberator,The New Masses,The Worker, andMorgen Freiheit.
Gropper was born to Harry and Jenny Gropper inNew York City, the eldest of six children. His parents wereJewish immigrants fromRomania andUkraine,[1] who were both employed in the city's garment industry, living in poverty on New York'sLower East Side.[2] His mother worked hard sewing piecework at home.[3] Harry Gropper, Bill's father, was university educated and fluent in eight languages, but was unable to find employment in America in a field for which he was suited.[4] This failure ofthe American economic system to make proper use of his father's talents doubtlessly contributed to William Gropper's lifelong antipathy toward capitalism.
Gropper's alienation was accentuated when on March 24, 1911, he lost a favorite aunt in theTriangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a disaster which resulted from locked doors and non-existent exits in a New York sweatshop.[5] Some 146 workers burned or jumped to their deaths on that day in what was New York's greatest human catastrophe prior to theterrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Gropper's interest in art began at a young age. As a child of six young he took chalk to the sidewalks, decorating the concrete with elaborate picture stories of cowboys and Indians that extended around the block.[4] As a child on the way to school, Gropper used to lug bundles of his mother's piecework sewing to thesweatshops by which she was employed.[3]
At age 13, Gropper took his first art instruction at the radicalFerrer School, where he studied underGeorge Bellows andRobert Henri.[6]
In 1913, Gropper graduated from public school, earning a medal in art and a scholarship to the National Academy of Design. The strong-willed Gropper refused to conform at the academy, however, and was subsequently expelled.[7] He attempted to attend high school that fall, but finances prevented his attendance and he was forced to seek work to help support his family.[7] He worked as an assistant in a clothing store, earning $5 a week.[3]
In 1915, Gropper showed a portfolio of his work toFrank Parsons, the head of theNew York School of Fine and Applied Arts. The work so impressed Parsons that Gropper was offered a scholarship to the school. Gropper continued to work reduced hours for reduced wages in the clothing store while he continued his artistic education.[8] In the subsequent two years, Gropper gained recognition and awards for his work.
In 1917, Gropper was offered a position on the staff of theNew York Tribune, where over the next several years he earned a steady income doing drawings for the paper's special Sunday feature articles. At this time, the politically radical Gropper was brought into the orbit of original and innovative artists around the left wing New York monthly,The Masses. AfterThe Masses was banned from theU.S. Mail in 1917, due to its unflinchinganti-militarism, Gropper joined artists likeRobert Minor,Maurice Becker,Art Young,Lydia Gibson,Hugo Gellert, andBoardman Robinson in contributing to its successor,The Liberator.
Gropper also contributed his art toThe Revolutionary Age, a revolutionary socialist weekly edited byLouis C. Fraina and (in later issues)John Reed, a publication which narrowly predated the establishment of theAmerican Communist Party, as well as toThe Rebel Worker, a magazine of theIndustrial Workers of the World, ananarcho-syndicalist union.
In 1920, Gropper went toCuba briefly as an oiler on aUnited Fruit Company freight boat. He left the ship in Cuba and spent some time there observing life and working as a supervisor on a railroad construction detail. He was forced to return home sooner than expected, however, owing to the terminal illness of his father.[9]
In January 1921, editorMax Eastman formally made Gropper a special contributor and member of the staff ofThe Liberator.[10] His time at the publication was not harmonious however, as many of the unpaid and underpaid artists and writers greatly resented Eastman, who collected a relatively opulent paycheck of $75 a week for, as Gropper later recalled, "lying on a couch and composing poetry and reading books".[11] A little coup was short-circuited in the end by Eastman's own determination to give up his post so as to visit Soviet Russia in 1922, a decision no doubt accelerated by the magazine's growing financial woes.Floyd Dell took over the editorial helm for the next year or so, with the publication soon coming under the financial and editorial umbrella of the Communist Party in a friendly takeover towards the end of that year.[12]
In August 1921, Bill Gropper married Gladys Oaks, herself a contributor toThe Liberator. The marriage proved to be short and turbulent, marked by the couple's collaboration to produce a book of verse and drawings calledChinese White, published in 1922. (According toWhittaker Chambers,China White aced out his own submission during a national poetry contest in 1923.[13]) Early in 1924, Gladys became involved with another man and the pair decided to separate.[14]
During the early 1920s, Gropper was a freelance contributor of work to such mainstream magazines asThe Bookman (for which he drew caricatures of authors), the liberal magazineThe Dial, andFrank Harris'New Pearson's Magazine.[15]
In the fall of 1924 Bill Gropper married his second wife, bacteriologist Sophie Frankle. Together, the two of them built a nine-room stone house inCroton-on-Hudson, New York, where they raised their family.[3] Shortly after their marriage, the couple spent a year in theSoviet Union, where Gropper was employed briefly on the staff of the newspaper of theAll-Union Communist Party,Pravda.[3]
Despite his contributions to a vast array of communist publications, Gropper was never formally a member of theCommunist Party USA.[16]
In 1927, Gropper went on a tour of Soviet Russia along with the novelistsSinclair Lewis andTheodore Dreiser in celebration of the tenth anniversary of theRussian Revolution.
During the second half of the 1930s, Gropper dedicated his art to the efforts to raise popular opposition tofascism in Europe.[16]
In 1937, he received aGuggenheim Fellowship[17] for fine arts.
The lobby of theFreeport New York Post Office features two murals by Gropper installed in 1938 and titledAir Mail andSuburban Post in Winter.[18] They are included in the listing of the property on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1989.[19] The murals were commissioned under theUnited States Department of the Treasury'sTreasury Relief Art Project, which commissioned art for existing Federal buildings.[20]: 62, 72 Gropper was also aWorks Progress Administration (WPA) artist.[21]
Due to his involvement with radical politics in the 1920s and 1930s, Gropper was called before theHouse Un-American Activities Committee in 1953.[16] The experience provided inspirational fodder for a series of fiftylithographs entitled theCaprichos.[16]
FollowingWorld War II, Gropper traveled toPoland to attend theWorld Congress of Intellectuals for Peace of 1948 inWrocław.[16] Afterwards, he decided to pay tribute to the Jews murdered in theHolocaust by painting one picture on the theme of Jewish life each year.[16]
In 1974, he was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. Gropper died in 1977 from amyocardial infarction atManhasset, New York, at the age of 79.
