Robert Gwathmey Art Prints

Robert Gwathmey, born in Virginia, was a sensitive observer of southern American culture, particularly attuned to the cultural nuances of race and class. He was one of the first white artists to produce respectful portraits of African Americans immersed in their daily lives. Gwathmey graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1930 and became known as a Social Realist. Active from the 1930s through the 1950s, Social Realists used their art to expose social injustices and to call for social change. By the 1940s, Gwathmey began to see his work exhibited in galleries and acquired by major museums. Gwathmey taught at The Cooper Union in New York City from 1942 until 1968. He was an inspiring teacher who urged his students to consider ethics in all their pursuits. For his unflinching social activism, he was monitored by the FBI for almost 30 years. Although Gwathmey's art, like that of other figurative artists, was eclipsed in the 1950s by abstract art, his form of social commentary became popular again during the 1960s. When Gwathmey died in his mid-eighties, the New York Times called him an "artist of social passions and style."