Some people grow more conservative as they age, but William Gropper was not one of them. In an interview at age 70, Gropper declared, “I'm from the old school, defending the underdog…. I feel for the people…. I can't close my eyes and say it is the best of all possible worlds and let it go at that. I become involved." Throughout his long life, Gropper adhered to this creed, whether as a cartoonist, painter, lithographer, or muralist.
William Gropper was the oldest of six children born to Harry and Jenny Gropper. His parents, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, were both employed in the garment industry and the family lived in poverty on the ‘Lower East Side’ of New York City. Gropper first studied art at the innovative Ferrer School, where he was inspired by George Bellows and Robert Henri. In 1915, Frank Parsons, the head of the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts [now Parsons School of Design], offered Gropper a scholarship to the school.
The young artist found his calling in 1917 when he received a position as a political cartoonist for the New York Tribune. His drawings for the newspaper established his reputation as a keen and opinionated observer. Gropper’s forceful style attracted attention and he provided illustrations and cartoons for magazines ranging from the left-wing New Masses to the mainstream Vanity Fair. His caricatures of America’s powerful officials and corrupt business leaders enraged his subjects and entertained his audience.
A committed economic radical, Gropper was best known for his satirical illustrations. He quickly joined the artists working for The Masses, a well-known New York monthly. In 1917, The Masses was banned from the U.S. mail because of its opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. Gropper then joined artists such as Boardman Robinson, Robert Minor, Maurice Becker, Art Young, Lydia Gibson, and Hugo Gellert in contributing to its successor, The Liberator. Gropper also worked for The Revolutionary Age, a socialist weekly, as well as The Rebel Worker, a magazine of the Industrial Workers of the World. Incredibly prolific, Gropper created thousands of political cartoons over an 11-year period for the Yiddish Freiheit, the largest U.S. newspaper associated with the Communist Party.
Until the 1930s, Gropper was primarily known as a cartoonist and illustrator. During the Great Depression, he began to paint more in oils. His work celebrated the dignity of workers; he championed unions and defended government programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Like his cartoons, his paintings specialized in devastating satirical depictions of racist Southern senators, horrifying lynchings of African Americans by the Ku Klux Klan under Jim Crow, and the smug self-absorption of anti-labor and anti-New Deal capitalists. He explained his work by noting that he “portrayed the type of representative that is opposed to progress and culture.” In 1937, Gropper won a Guggenheim Fellowship which he used to tour the ‘Dust Bowl.’ The subsequent series of paintings and drawings were serialized in The Nation, illustrating the plight of migrant laborers and the widespread poverty in America.
Gropper also warned Americans about the dangers of German antisemitism. “With the human imagination it is difficult to understand the cruelty, madness, and vileness that fascism seeks to create,” said Gropper. “I cannot remain silent and watch as my Jewish brothers and sisters are murdered. I want to protest, scream, fight, and save the lives of the Jewish people.” During World War II, Gropper volunteered his services to the Treasury Department and the White House Office of War Information, illustrating a number of war bond posters and cartoons condemning domestic and foreign fascists. He also painted several government-sponsored murals for the Treasury Relief Art Project
Nonetheless, as early as 1942, the FBI began investigating Gropper for sedition and treason. During the ‘Red Scare’ of the early 1950s, Gropper was a target of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. Ironically, his cardinal offense seems to have been the creation of an allegedly subversive illustrated map of American folklore in 1946.In 1953, Gropper was subpoenaed to appear before McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations to answer the allegation that his work was inspired by Communism. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and was essentially blacklisted; his work was dropped by many museums and galleries and banned from foreign traveling shows. Gropper's telephone was tapped by the government and the FBI harassed him, his family, and anyone involved with him professionally.
The effect on his life was immediate and devastating. Gropper’s career was virtually destroyed; the altered political climate and the rise of abstract expressionism seemed to sweep Gropper into the dustbin of art history. In response, Gropper produced a 50-print set entitled The Capriccios [1953-56] inspired by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s series of the same name. Liberated from the constraints of a single political cartoon, Gropper’s Capriccios drew a provocative parallel between the injustice of the Spanish Inquisition and the paranoia of McCarthyism.
However, his life had yet one more twist. In the political upheaval of the 1960s, Gropper's biting satire became popular once again. In 1973, he created a series of ten color lithographs of events surrounding President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. Buoyed by his ‘rediscovery,’ Gropper worked continuously until his death in 1977, still producing works attacking racism, war, avarice, and exploitation.
Throughout his life, Gropper remained committed to exposing social injustice and inequality through his art. He always believed that art could help create political change. His work went beyond antipathy toward capitalism and support for workers to condemnation of racism, fascism, and antisemitism, whether at home or abroad. “You don’t paint with color,” Gropper once said, “you paint with conviction, freedom, love and heartaches—with what you have.”