The John Reed Club (1929-1936) was an American, semi-national, Marxist club for writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist, activist, and poet, John Reed.
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The John Reed Club was founded in October 1929 by staff members of The New Masses magazine to support leftist and Marxist artists and writers. Originally politically independent, it and The New Masses officially affiliated with Moscow in November 1930.
John Reed Club chapters peaked at 30. From New York, it spread to Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, and other cities.
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Artistic members of the John Reed Club of New York began holding art exhibitions in late 1929, shortly after the club's formation.
The first art exhibition occurred at the United Workers' Cooperative Apartments (aka United Workers Cooperative Colony, aka "Commie Coops") on Bronx Park East in December 1929. Artists included: Jacob Burck, Fred Ellis, William Gropper, Eitaro Ishigaki,[1] Gan Kolski, Louis Lozowick, Jan Matulka, Morris Pass, Anton Refregier, Louis Leon Ribak, Esther Shemitz, Otto Soglow, and Art Young.[2]
The second exhibition occurred in January 1930: 42 drawings, paintings, and lithographs that traveled from the Borough Park Workers' Club (43rd Street, Brooklyn) to other clubs in Brownsville, Williamsburg, the Bronx, and Manhattan.[2]
The third exhibition occurred in April 1931 with the "Proletpen," a Yiddish cultural group of the Communist Party: it comprised some 100 paintings, drawings, and cartoons by some 30 artists.[2]
"Twenty John Reed Club Artists on Proletarian and Revolutionary Themes" occurred at the ACA Gallery in November 1932: 36 paintings, drawings, and lithographs by 21 artists — Albert Abramowitz, Bard, Mark Baum, Joseph Biel, Jacob Burck, Dehn, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, [William Hernandez], Eitaro Ishigaki, Limbach, Louis Lozowick, Moses Oley, Quirt, Anton Refregier, Philip Resman, Louis Leon Ribak, William Siegel, Soglow, Raphael Soyer, and Max Spivach. Four known works comprised Gellert's "Karl Max' Capital in Lithographs" (from of set of 60 lithographs).[2]
Another exhibition occurred again at the ACA Gallery[3] in 1935: its theme was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and included "Roustabouts" by Joe Jones.
The last known exhibition occurred at the ACA Gallery: its theme was "The Capitalist Crisis" and gained little notice outside of Communist press organs.
The site of the John Reed Club in New York had held exhibitions of member work since Summer 1930; it established a gallery there in 1932. Records are scarce for 1932-1935.[2]
The John Reed Club had a somewhat prestigious membership in its early days among leftist circles. Later, Mc-Carthy style activists worked to change it to a badge of shame.
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Samuel Lewis Shane and Whittaker Chambers were members in New York. Richard Wright and the artist Morris Topchevsky were members in Chicago. (In 1944, Wright distilled his uncomfortable experience in anAtlantic Monthly article, "I Tried to be a Communist".)
The clubs were dissolved into the American Artists' Congress in 1936 by order of the American Communist Party.[4]
The magazine Partisan Review was originally a publication of the John Reed Club.
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