A chaotic scene of protesters clashing with police in London’s Trafalgar Sq. graces the mud jacket of this e-book. Demonstrators are proven being clubbed to the bottom as railings are torn up for weapons and an officer on a rearing white horse prepares to strike. Painted by Cliff Rowe whereas he was staying in Soviet Russia, the monumental social realist canvas captures with vivid dynamism the civil unrest sparked in 1932 by the British authorities’s sweeping profit cuts.
It was towards a backdrop of financial hardship, unemployment, class battle and rising political extremism that Rowe, having returned to London in 1933, grew to become instrumental in establishing the Artists Worldwide Affiliation (AIA)—a radical union of artists, which grew to turn out to be a preferred entrance towards fascism and warfare, and whose first decade the writer and curator Andy Good friend chronicles right here with scholarly rigour and narrative verve.
The extent to which members have been concerned internationally is putting
Only a dozen or so women and men, principally underemployed industrial artists related to the Communist Get together, attended the AIA’s first candle-lit assembly. Amongst them have been Misha Black, James Boswell, James Lucas, James Fitton and Pearl Binder who, like Rowe, had frolicked in Russia. Binder recounted enthusiastically how, in Soviet society, artists have been supported, organised and suitably employed, generally sponsored by commerce unions or the Crimson Military. To that small group, all of it appeared a world away from the precarious state of affairs through which many British artists now discovered themselves, within the wake of the Wall Avenue crash and ensuing international downturn. The capitalist system gave the impression to be faltering, whereas the political state of affairs was changing into insufferable—oppressive at dwelling, and more and more harmful internationally. As Good friend writes, the aim of those that established the AIA (initially referred to as the “Artists Worldwide”) was “to serve shared political objectives via their artwork and to develop an artists’ organisation that will act as an auxiliary to progressive causes”.
Born from a perception within the energy of artwork to revolutionise society, the AIA’s said purpose was “the Worldwide unity of artists towards Imperialist Conflict, Conflict on the Soviet Union, Fascism and Colonial Oppression”. As Black later remarked, it “had no mental foundation…it was purely socially and politically motivated [and] sprang from an actual feeling of social accountability”. The group, whose membership grew quickly, designed posters, contributed to left-wing political publications, hosted public conferences and lectures and, most importantly, organised common exhibitions, typically on an formidable scale. Their work is generously illustrated all through Comrades in Artwork, from eye-catching political graphics and line-drawn cartoons to abstraction, realism and Surrealism. Though the AIA engaged with capital “P” politics, it evidently eschewed the artwork world’s aesthetic antagonisms by accommodating most types of the interval.
Highly effective pressure
Below Black’s chairmanship, and with the well-connected sculptor Betty Rea as its secretary, the AIA grew to become, in Good friend’s evaluation, “sensible at networking and confirmed nice ingenuity in pursuit of collective endeavour”. Certainly, regardless of being run by a nucleus of left-wing activists—a number of of whom have been beneath British Safety Service surveillance—it could quickly embrace lots of the nation’s main artists, equivalent to Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Augustus John and Laura Knight. By the outbreak of the Spanish Civil Conflict in 1936, it had greater than 600 members (finally rising to simply over 1,000) and will not be dismissed as a mere Communist Get together entrance. Correctly, Good friend doesn’t dwell on its celebrities, focusing as a substitute on the biographies of lesser-known figures equivalent to Felicia Browne, who volunteered to combat with the communist militia in Spain and have become the primary British—and solely feminine—combatant to be killed in motion in that battle.
The extent to which AIA members have been concerned internationally is putting. Good friend uncovers a number of connections with Moscow, Paris, Barcelona and New York, displaying how the organisation’s goals and actions have been shared by equal teams, together with the American Artists’ Congress, which equally sought to withstand international fascism and marketing campaign for cultural freedom and democracy. Coinciding with the Italian fascist invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, the AIA’s pivotal exhibition Artists In opposition to Fascism and Conflict featured French, Dutch, Polish and Soviet rooms, whereas different well-attended exhibitions attracted worldwide submissions from luminaries equivalent to Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, the latter welcoming AIA members to his Paris studio to view the highly effective anti-war portray Guernica (1937) whereas it was nonetheless in progress.
Because the Second World Conflict approached, the AIA’s actions continued at tempo, together with the institution of an Artists’ Refugee Committee to supply visas and houses for émigrés fleeing Nazi and fascist oppression. Common exhibitions and occasions continued all through the battle and several other small touring reveals circulated to manufacturing unit canteens, native authority-run British Eating places and authorities workplaces. An inexpensive “Everyman Prints” collection was additionally produced, fulfilling the AIA’s aim of extending public entry to the humanities. Its high-profile 1943 exhibition For Liberty is mentioned at size by Good friend. Held within the bombed-out basement of the John Lewis division retailer on Oxford Avenue, it featured 175 works, together with Oskar Kokoschka’s crushing denunciation of warfare What We Are Combating For (1943) and a bit dedicated to the “4 Freedoms” articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: freedom of speech and faith and freedom from concern and wish.
Dynamic interaction
The story of the AIA was first advised in 1983 by the Museum of Trendy Artwork, Oxford, within the exhibition AIA: The Story of the Artists Worldwide Affiliation 1933-1953. Increasing on this basis, Good friend’s examine attracts on quite a few just lately found sources, shedding new mild on the AIA’s evolution from radical left-wing group to an organisation largely accepted by the British institution. As a bunch biography, its richly detailed narrative deftly balances a spread of particular person tales with out dropping sight of the broader historic context. It reveals how the dynamic interaction between artwork, politics and activism labored to assist progressive agendas and affect public opinion throughout a interval of maximum turmoil.
A Republican militia fighter by Felicia Browne, a member of the Artists Worldwide Affiliation who was the primary British, and the one feminine, combatant killed in motion throughout the Spanish Civil ConflictCourtesy Thames & Hudson
However this isn’t a complete account of the AIA, which continued till 1971, by then a shadow if its former self. In specializing in the primary ten years—undoubtedly its most lively and politically very important—a lot is omitted. We don’t, as an example, learn of its members’ involvement with the Competition of Britain, or their contributions to the post-war peace motion. Nor can we study the way it grew to become politically emasculated in 1953 when the “Political Clause” was dropped from its structure. Nonetheless, Good friend has made a big contribution to our information of the group’s heyday, advancing our understanding and appreciation of its exceptional and far-reaching impression. With, in 2025, the looming spectre of fascism propelled by rising authoritarianism and far-right populism around the globe, his revelatory examine feels well timed. Certainly there’s a lot to study from the AIA’s instance.
• Andy Good friend, Comrades in Artwork: Artists In opposition to Fascism 1933-1943, Thames & Hudson, 360pp, 202 illustrations, £40 (hb), printed 4 September
• David Trigg is an unbiased author, critic and artwork historian. He’s the writer of Artwork Books for the Folks: The Origins of The Penguin Trendy Painters (Cambridge College Press, 2025)
