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Non-Fiction

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Non-Fiction

1943
29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm)

Robert Gwathmey
United States (Manchester, VA, 1903 – 1988, Southampton, NY)

Object Type: Painting
Medium and Support: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Marion Stratton Gould Fund
Accession Number: 1951.7
Location: Currently on view
Link to this object
Collection: Encyclopedia Britannica Collection

Entrenched in the social realist movement, which sought to depict the trials and tribulations of all people, Robert Gwathmey focused on the lives of Black sharecroppers in the American South. Non-Fiction shows a once common sight on southern farms: older children tending to the young while adults worked all day in the fields. The barbed wire and minstrel puppet figure symbolize the dual oppressions of segregation and racism.

Born in Virginia and spending much of his life in New York City, Gwathmey spent two summers in the 1940s working alongside Black tobacco farmers in North Carolina. At a time when Black artists in the American South were rarely granted a platform for self-representation, Gwathmey, as a white artist, was able to depict the oppression he witnessed.

[Gallery label text, 2024]

In the 1940s, Robert Gwathmey focused his artist’s eye upon the lives of African-American sharecroppers in the South. Non-Fiction shows a common sight on southern farms; older children tended to the young when both parents worked all day in the fields. The barbed wire and minstrel figure symbolize the dual oppressions of segregation and racism.

[Gallery label text, 2007]

Provenance
Encyclopedia Britannica Collection of Contemporary American Painting, Chicago, IL; purchased from them by Senator William Benton, CT, 1948; purchased from him by the Gallery in 1951

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Web Links See links to web pages and lesson plans
Seeing America Inservice Materials from a teacher in-service presentation Spring 2008
Seeing America Inservice Materials from a teacher in-service presentation Spring 2008
Seeing America Chapter on Robert Gwathmey's Non-Fiction, written by Michael Kammen.


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