The Last Defenses of Capitalism, 1932. by Hugo Gellert (1892—1985) Chalk on celotex, plaster

Hugo Gellert executed this study for the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Murals by American Painters and Photographers." The show was organized to bring to the attention of Rockefeller Center's administrators the work of American artists who were capable of executing murals for the

complex. An outspoken Communist, Gellert critiqued the capitalist system that brought about the project through his deliberately offensive portraits of some of the most powerful men in America.

The image is arranged according to class distinctions.

At the top is the ruling alliance—President Hoover,

J. P Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and Henry Ford,

shown in league with the gangster, Al Capone.

Soldiers and lawmen, the civil servants that enforce the status quo, occupy the middle tier. Tom Mooney, a trade unionist arrested in San Francisco on false

charges of pipe bombing is shown imprisoned at the bottom.

 

Walfsonian Museum, Miami Beach, Miami

Done