page_title: Hugo Gellert
section_title: Art as politics
hierarchical_section_title: Hugo Gellert / Biography / Art as politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of Elöre featuring cover art of Hugo Gellert. "Háboru után." = "Out of the War." Issue date: February 6, 1916. Published in USA prior to 1923, public domain.
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: Opposed to World War I, Gellert published his first anti-war art in 1916. His work was prominently featured both in the illustrated magazine of the Hungarian Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America, Előre (Forward), as well as Max Eastman's radical monthly magazine The Masses from this time. He also created numerous illustrations for Eastman's successor magazine, The Liberator, as well as sundry publications of the Communist Party USA after its formation, such as The Workers Monthly and The New Masses. Later, Gellert was offered a position as a staff artist for The New Yorker magazine. In 1925, he moved to the New York Times.
  In 1927, Gellert was appointed the leader of the Anti-Horthy League, the first American anti-fascist organization. In this capacity, he organized a demonstration against U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, and both he and his wife were arrested while picketing the White House.
  In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, feeling uncomfortable about Gellert's public persona and politics, petitioned to have Gellert's work removed from its collection. However, they were forced to reconsider when other artists, many of whom did not share Gellert's social idealism, came to his defense as fellow artists and threatened to withdraw their own works.
  In 1934 Gellert was among the leaders of the Artists Committee of Action, an informal group which had formed to protest Nelson Rockefeller's destruction of Diego Rivera's mural Man at the Crossroads early in the year at Rockefeller Center. Gellert was instrumental in the establishment of Art Front magazine, which started publication in November 1934 and was at first jointly published by the ACA and the Artists Union.
  In 1939, Gellert helped organize the group, "Artists for Defense". He later became the Chairman for "Artists for Victory", an organization that included over 10,000 members.
caption: "Out of the War." This cover image of an armless veteran being spoon-fed, from a February 1916 issue of Előre, exemplifies Gellert's radical anti-militarism.
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