page_title: Hugo Gellert
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Hugo Gellert / Biography / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of The Liberator's first issue, March 1918, art by Hugo Gellert. Original in Tim Davenport Collection, scan by Tim Davenport, no copyright claimed.
context_page_description: Hugo Gellert was a Hungarian-American illustrator and muralist. A committed radical and member of the Communist Party of America, Gellert created much work for political activism in the 1920s and 1930s. It was distinctive in style, considered by some art critics as among the best political work of the first half of the 20th century.
  His family immigrated to New York in 1906. Gellert studied in art schools in New York. His illustrations were first published in radical Hungarian and American magazines, but in the 1920s Gellert worked as a staff artist for The New Yorker magazine and The New York Times newspaper. Although he was opposed to United States' entry into World War I, when conditions were worsening in Europe in 1939 after the rise of Nazi Germany, Gellert helped organize "Artists for Defense"; he later became chairman of "Artists for Victory", which included over 10,000 members.
context_section_description: Gellert died in Freehold Township, New Jersey on December 9, 1985.
  Gellert's social commentary, his work and his beliefs have placed him among the greatest American social artists of the Art Deco era, according to experts in the field.
  His brother Ernest, also a socialist, was drafted in 1917 but refused induction, claiming to be a conscientious objector. He was convicted of refusing the draft and sentenced to prison.  Gellert fled to Mexico after Ernest died of a gunshot wound in prison at Fort Hancock, New Jersey, officially a suicide.  Their brother Lawrence was a music collector; in the 1930s he documented black protest traditions in the South of the United States.
  Although remembered for his art in print, Gellert also painted a number of  public murals and frescoes. Among the surviving frescoes is the series that adorn the front entryways of each of the four buildings of the Seward Park Housing Corporation, a housing cooperative with 1728 apartments, designed and built by Herman Jessor as part of the social housing cooperatives built by the Abraham Kazan and the United Housing Foundation,.  In 2003, the series became the topic of controversy after the cooperative converted from its limited equity status to a fully private and market-rate residential co-op. The cooperative attempted to remove or destroy the four giant Gellert murals. The Co-op board felt the socialist-style paintings were no longer representative of the people or the Lower East Side neighborhood.
  Public protests and letter writing, inspired threats of legal action and other possible setbacks, caused the plan to be delayed.  Gellert's artwork can still be seen in each of the buildings.
caption: Gellert did the cover art for first issue of The Liberator in March 1918, the seminal American radical magazine.
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