Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Collection on Hugo Gellert

Hugo Gellert (1892-1985) was a communist graphic artist, cartoonist, muralist and painter. He was born in Hungary in 1892 and came to the U.S. in 1906. Gellert was a leading contributor of art work to The Masses, The Liberator, and New Masses. Gellert published three books: Karl Marx in Lithographs (1933), Comrade Gulliver (1935), Aesop Said So (1936). Among his murals were those done for the National Maritime Union headquarters and the Seward Park Houses, both in New York City. He also played a leading role in many Popular Front arts organizations from the 1930s through World War II. Gellert was the director of the John Reed School of Art. In 1937 he organized the Mural Artists Guild of the United Scenic Painters, and successfully fought, as chair of the Artists Coordinating Committee, to insure that only works of organized artists were accepted for exhibits at the New York World's Fair. During WWII, Gellert was active in Artists for Victory. Throughout his life, Gellert contributed to the Hungarian-American radical press beginning in 1916, with the newspaper Elore, and later to the Magyar Szo. He also organized, in 1927, the Anti-Horthy League, a Hungarian-American anti-fascist group.