One from a portfolio of fifty lithographs
Not on view
Not all American artists working in the 1950s embraced abstraction. Gropper’s paintings, prints, and caricatures skewered politicians and the wealthy, who he felt exploited the poor. His work brought him to the attention of the FBI, and he was blacklisted in 1953: his name was published on the front page of the New York Times, and he was called to testify about his “un-American” political views in front of Congress. In response, he created a series of fifty lithograph prints that he titled Capriccios, a direct reference to the late-eighteenth-century Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s most famous group of etchings. Gropper’s prints, like Goya’s, chronicle the worst of humanity, exposing the dark side of what seem like advances in technology, government, and society.
2023
Explore more
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.