Hugo Gellert - Artist
Hugo Gellert was a great artist and a close friend of my grandfather, Kalman Marki. I enjoyed meeting Hugo when I was a child and teenager. He was also in the film "Reds" by Warren Beatty. You can catch it on Netflix.
Three major works are described below as well as many links. Check out the first link on my website, which shows Gellert posters I discovered at NYU when researching Louis Weinstock. Louis was a friend of his.
"Hugo Gellert was born in Hungary in 1892 and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1906. Gellert died in 1985. He was a very well-known artist in this country during the 1930s, yet he has essentially been forgotten. Today he is perhaps more infamous for his passionate commitment to leftist political agitation than for his contribution to American art, but Gellert strongly disavowed any distinction between the two. He professed that, for him, political agitation and art were the same thing."
Hugo Gellert's Seward Park Murals
One of the most interesting stories is about the murals he created in 1959 in a housing complex. There was a plan to take them down and a community of people rallied to protect them. I plan on photographing them the next time I am in New York. Read the story by James Wechsler
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Century of the Common Man. 1942.
Two Speeches by Henry A. Wallace,Vice-President of the United States
Silk Screen Prints by Hugo Gellert
International Workers Order, New York
An address before the Free World Assn., New York, May 9, 1942.
A speech delivered at the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship Mass Meeting, New York, Nov. 8, 1942
This edition is limited to fifty-four portfolios each containing nineteen original silk screen prints signed by the artist.
This is number 52.
"To Kalman Hugo Gellert" (signed in ink)