In the 1920s, American realism, though incorporating foreign influences including European realism, distinguishes itself in the importance accorded daily life. Works of artists of the Ashcan school, led by Robert Henry, pay particular attention to urban life and echoes contemporary literature (e.g. Dos Passos’s USA trilogy). After 1929, this movement takes a new turn with public commissions during the New Deal aimed at illustrating the national history for the masses. This new focus has its equivalent in socialist realism as demonstrated by Boris Groys in Educating the Masses: Socialist Realist Art.
During the 1930s in USSR, artists were asked to illustrate collectivization, and were encouraged to go to the kolkhoz. Moreover, all major exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad had a rural section. This thematic is illustrated by such prominent painters as Arkady Plastov, Sergey Gerasimov, Mikhail Avilov, Vitold Bialynisky-Birulia, Fedor Bogorodsky. This production should be compared to U.S. works of art from the same period, for example, Mexican artists working in New York during that decade and the American regionalism of Thomas Hart Benton.
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