Origin: 1920s and 1930s, particularly during the Great Depression in the United States
Pioneers: Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, Ilya Repin, Ben Shahn, Diego Rivera
Related Movements: Realism, Regionalism
Social Realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions. While the movement's characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism.
The term is sometimes more narrowly used for an art movement that flourished between the two World Wars as a reaction to the hardships and problems suffered by common people after the Great Crash. In order to make their art more accessible to a wider audience, artists turned to realist portrayals of anonymous workers as well as celebrities as heroic symbols of strength in the face of adversity. The goal of the artists in doing so was political as they wished to expose the deteriorating conditions of the poor and working classes and hold the existing governmental and social systems accountable...
Social Realism, as an art movement that became prominent in the US between the two world wars, as a reaction to the increasing hardship for ordinary people, was influenced by the social realist tradition in France which had existed for decades.
Social Realism traces back to 19th-century European Realism, including the art of Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. Britain's Industrial Revolution aroused concern for the poor, and in the 1870s the work of artists such as Luke Fildes, Hubert von Herkomer, Frank Holl, and William Small were widely reproduced in The Graphic...
Source: Wikipedia