Social realism

Social realism refers to any realistic painting or graphic work that also carries an explicit social or political comment, usually focused on the lives of workers, the poor and the marginalised. The tendency crystallised in the first half of the twentieth century as a response to economic crises, industrialisation and inequality; it aimed not to beautify reality but to bear witness to it. Related phenomena include Gustave Courbet as a forerunner, American painters of the Great Depression, and the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Social realism must be distinguished from the official doctrine of Socialist Realism imposed as state policy in the service of totalitarian propaganda. In twentieth-century Ukrainian art, painters who sought to depict the true fate of peasants and workers often faced ideological pressure, and their sincere social themes clashed with the rigid canons forced upon them from above.