"American artist Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988) was a leading member of the Social Realist movement that flourished from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Motivated by the belief that asserting social consciousness and protest through art could effect significant positive change, Gwathmey and fellow Social Realists such as Ben Shahn, Philip Evergood, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden sought to use their art to expose privilege and pretense, demand social justice, and issue a call for major alterations in the prevailing socioeconomic system."--BOOK JACKET.

"Gwathmey is perhaps best remembered as the first white American painter to depict African Americans in an unromanticized, respectful manner."--BOOK JACKET.

"As a lifelong activist against injustice, Gwathmey was a devoted supporter of humane causes at home and abroad, a fact that prompted the FBI to keep him under surveillance for nearly thirty years. Using Gwathmey's FBI file, along with numerous interviews and records in the Archives of American Art, Michael Kammen crafts a compelling portrait of an engaging American painter in the midst of dramatic social and political change."--BOOK JACKET.