Strike Breakers

Imbued with all the ferocity of a heated military battle, William Gropper's Strike Breakers depicts the force of the law breaking up a labor demonstration. Three uniformed policemen, mounted on rearing and leaping horses, charge like a cavalry intent on destroying all in its path. The particularly frightening policeman at the far right turns his face, a mask of aggression, toward the viewer as he raises his right fist. Unarmed strikers attempt to flee. Some have already fallen as victims of the attacking policemen's cudgel blows; they cannot escape being trampled by the horses' hooves. In the background, one man still manages to hold up his picket sign, a valiant assertion of his legal right to protest. Gropper emphasizes the brutality of the police as the agents of management, clearly indicating his sympathy with the oppressed, hapless workers.

Before 1949, Gropper's political cartoons often championed radical socialist and liberal causes by satirizing society's inequities. He experienced persecution and harassment first-hand during the early 1950s, when he was among the artists blacklisted in the anti-communist campaign of Senator Joseph McCarthy. This experience reinforced his sympathy for the masses. Gropper created this print as his concerned response to the American labor strikes and civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s.

Technically, Strike Breakers is a very accomplished print. Gropper created tonal passages of modeling by placing parallel lines close together, using cross-hatching, and roughening the plate surface with a roulette. Powerfully composed and drawn, this etching reveals Gropper's study of old master painting. Like many other etchings by Gropper, Strike Breakers was printed in collaboration with master printer Emiliano Sorini, whose "ES" mark is embossed in the margin of this impression.