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Strike Breakers

1965
Etching on wove Rives paper
Image: 11 3/4 x 15 1/2 in. (29.8 x 39.4 cm)
Sheet: 18 5/8 x 22 in. (47.3 x 55.9 cm)
Credit LineTerra Foundation for American Art, Gift in memory of Emiliano Sorini, printmaker
Object number2004.10
SignedIn graphite, lower right beneath plate: Gropper; lower right in plate: Gropper (appears in reverse)
Interpretation
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.
ProvenanceThe artist
Emiliano (the printer) and Barbara Sorini, New Jersey
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, 2004
Exhibition History
Hoofbeats and Heartbeats: The Horse in American Art, The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky (organizer). Venue: The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, August 22–November 21, 2010. [exh. cat].

 Terra Collection-in-Residence, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, September 15, 2022–September 30, 2026.

Published References
Sorini, Emiliano. Gropper - Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings. San Francsisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1998. No. 62, p. 62.

Cartwright, Ingrid. Hoofbeats and Heartbeats: The Horse in American Art. (exh. cat., The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky). Lexington, Kentucky: The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, 2010. Text pp. 64–65; ill. fig. 36, p. 65 (color).

There are no additional artworks by this artist in the collection.