Then and Now: American Social Realism NEW YORK, New York Subject Line Please provide verification code New York, NY - Forum Gallery presents a group exhibition of American social realism featuring paintings, drawings, and sculpture dating from the first half of the Twentieth Century to today. Artists working in the years between the world wars and well known for their contributions are shown side by side with contemporary American Artists whose work continues the humanist legacy of social realism.
American social realism took shape in the 1920s in the centers of commerce also home to artistic communities, like New York and Chicago. The cultural shift in the United States seen in the art of the social realists bridges the high modernist ideals of Europe and the struggle and very human drama evoked by the Great Depression and the political upheavals of the 1920s and 30s.