The Eternal City

~As the 1930s wore on a relentless sequence of events contributed to the mounting sense of international crisis. The invasion of Ethiopa, continuing Japanese aggression in China, the Spanish Fascist rebellion, the Anschluss and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia rendered the expansionist...

In 1848, in the midst of a letter evoking the “indescribable rapture” with which the Roman populace celebrated the news of Metternich’s fall and tore down the doubleheaded ~eagle from the Palazzo di Venezia, Fuller acknowledged that terrible bloodshed was...

In William Gropper’s Refugees (ca. 1937, fig. 17), an anonymous peasant group crosses a barren landscape in slow procession. This painting, completed at the height of the Popular Front, forms a dramatic contrast to the antifascist illustrations dating from the early thirties, especially those by Gropper himself. Gone are the simple dichotomies with the worker-heroes vanquishing the fascist-villains: Refugees neither promises ultimate victory to the people nor explicitly condemns the fascist …