Nick Wright reviews the current exhibition of banners produced by Hammersmith Communist Party in the 1930s, to help the Spanish Republic. Legend has it that while Picasso was living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, a visiting German officer asked him, upon seeing a photo of the painting Guernica…

PL Henderson introduces the #WOMENSART project, which demonstrates how women have continued to create art, often as radicals, rebels and pioneers, despite the social, cultural and economic restrictions placed upon them. In 1972, Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT created a small manifesto entitled ‘Women’s Art’ in which she highlighted the cultural…

Jane Kallir focuses on the relationship of 1930s American artists to the Communist Party.  In the 1930s, the Great Depression’s far-reaching economic impact lent credence to the Marxist belief that capitalism was doomed. Membership in the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA) swelled, and artists became increasingly politicized. The near total collapse of…

Christine Lindey reviews the current Royal Academy exhibition, and recommends the art - but not the didactic, vindictive and reactionary curation. In January 1918 the Russian Soviet Republic was the first state in the world to officially support the avant-garde. Fired by the revolution’s socialist ideology, artists rejected the tsarist regime’s…