The leading cultural activist in the Canadian Communist Party in the 1930s, Oscar Ryan was the formative figure in the Workers’ Theatre movement in Canada…
Nazir Nabaa, a respected Syrian painter, made his greatest contributions to Arab modern art in the 1960s and 1970s, when he contributed to the graphic…
Kim Pok-chin was a pioneering modern sculptor, art critic, and socialist agitator who led a progressive literary movement in colonial Korea. Studies of Kim and…
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
The term ‘modernism’ is commonly used to describe some of the literary and cultural production of the early twentieth century in China, Japan, and Korea,…
Amrus Natalsya was born 21 October 1933, in Medan, Sumatra. Having also trained as a painter, Natalsya is known primarily as a pioneering figure of…
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Antonio Gramsci is among the most influential political and cultural theorists of the twentieth century and one of the most important Marxists. Born in Sardinia,…
French author Louis Aragon was a member of the surrealist movement until he split with André Breton and began to devote more of his energy…
Communism is first and foremost the reality of long-dismantled or nearly defunct regimes in China, the (former) Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea:…
The poetry of Paul Éluard, one of the founders of the surrealist movement, is often mistakenly classified as solely belonging to the surrealist style. It…
Dong Xiwen [董希文] was a modern Chinese painter, whose art was widely appreciated in Communist China. Dong attended the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou,…
An alliance of left-wing movements in France, the Popular Front (Front Populaire) won the May 1936 elections, leading to the first French government headed by…
The First American Artists’ Congress convened over three days in New York City, and marked the formal establishment of the American Artists’ Congress (1936–1942). The…
Mikhail Zoshchenko was a Soviet writer of short stories and tales (sometimes autobiographical), as well as a feuilletonist, memoirist, and dramatist. He was a member…
Albert Tucker was a modern Australian painter, known best for his series of works depicting the horrors of wartime and harsh images of the Australian…
The Artists’ Front of Thailand (AFT) formed in 1974, immediately following the violent political events of October 1973. The group came together for the purpose…
Claude McKay was a Jamaican poet, novelist, essayist, activist, and editor. He is best known for his involvement in the New Negro movement of the…
One of the foremost American playwrights of the first half of the twentieth century, Clifford Odets is best known for his social realist plays and…
Abraham Regino Vigo was one of the most talent artists of the first avant-garde in Buenos Aires. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, but at…
One of the most recognizable Mexican painters of the twentieth century, Frida Kahlo produced around 200 paintings, dozens of drawings and an illustrated journal. She…