Term used to refer to the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and film makers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. In general it should not be confused with SOCIALIST REALISM, the official art form of the USSR, which was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934, and later by allied Communist parties worldwide. Social realism, in contrast, represents a democratic tradition of independent socially motivated artists, usually of left-wing or liberal persuasion. Their preoccupation with the conditions of the lower classes was a result of the democratic movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, so social realism in its fullest sense should be seen as an international phenomenon, despite the term’s frequent association with American painting. While the artistic style of social realism varies from nation to nation, it almost always utilizes a form of descriptive or critical realism (e.g. the work in 19th-century Russia of the WANDERERS).

• social realism
  • Industrial scenes, §3: Depictions of the industrial worker
  • Mural, §1(ii): Europe, after c 1930
  • Propaganda, §3: After 1900
  • Realism
  • India, Republic of
    • Malani, Nalini
  • Italy
    • Michetti, Francesco Paolo, §2: 1880 and after
  • South Africa
    • South Africa, §IV, 1: Painting and drawing
  • United States of America
    • Abstract Expressionism, §1: Background, origins and early phase
    • American Scene painting
    • Soyer
    • USA, §III, 3: Painting and graphic arts: Modernism, to World War II