Maurice Becker
Maurice Becker (1889– August 28, 1975) was a
Biography
Early years
Maurice Becker was born in
The young Maurice took night classes in bookkeeping and art while working days as a sign painter.
Radical art
Maurice Becker is best remembered as an illustrator for
He married Dorothy Baldwin, an active Socialist, in 1918. That same year he became a conscientious objector to American participation in World War I. He fled to Mexico to avoid the draft.[3] He was arrested upon his return to the United States in 1919 and was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor, of which he served 4 months at Fort Leavenworth prior to commutation of his sentence.[4]
Becker was a frequent contributor to the radical press, publishing his art in such periodicals as Revolt,
From 1921 to 1923, Becker lived in Mexico, where he worked as an artist for El Pulsa de México, an English-language magazine. After that time, he dedicated himself to painting full-time, essentially ending his career as a political artist for magazines. He did occasionally contribute art to political publications after that date, however, such as an apolitical drawing entitled "Summer," which ran in the August 1926 issue of
Becker remained a political radical throughout his life and was either a member or a
Maurice Becker died at the Jewish Home of Eastern Pennsylvania in Scranton.
Footnotes
- ^ Rebecca Zurier, Art for the Masses: A Radical Magazine and Its Graphics, 1911–1917. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Page 175.
- ^ Zurier, Art for the Masses, pg. 176.
- ^ Zurier, Art for the Masses, pg. 176.
- ^ Zurier, Art for the Masses, pg. 176.
- ^ Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix — Part IX, pg. 1000.
- ^ HUAC, Appendix – Part IX, pg. 641.
- ^ HUAC, Appendix – Part IX, pp. 574, 1075.
External links
- Smithsonian Institution: Maurice Becker Papers
- Comrades in Art: Maurice Becker
- "Cartoons from the Daily Worker," Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/
- Two Becker exhibition catalogs from the 1940s available as a full-text PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries