Workers of the World, Unite!
1937
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
wood engraving
Dimensions
image: 20.3 × 15.2 cm (8 × 6 in.) sheet: 32.5 × 25.5 cm (12 13/16 × 10 1/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams
Accession Number
2008.115.2839
Art Historical Context
**Workers of the World, Unite!** is a striking wood engraving by American artist Rockwell Kent, created in 1937. Kent, renowned for his bold realism and social activism, often used printmaking to champion labor rights and humanitarian causes. This compact image (8 × 6 inches) captures the revolutionary slogan from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' *Communist Manifesto*, reflecting the era's turbulent labor movements during the Great Depression. Wood engraving, Kent's favored medium here, involves incising fine lines into a hard wood block (typically end-grain boxwood) for precise, high-contrast...
About the Artist
Rockwell Kent
Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) was an American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and writer who combined a vigorous, heroic style with an adventurous life spent in some of the most remote landscapes on earth. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he studied architecture at Columbia University and painting under William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, and Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent's artistic vision was...