Hugo Gellert (1892 - 1985)
Illustrator and muralist Hugo Gellert was born Hugo Grünbaum in Budapest, Hungary. The name was changed when the family emigrated to the United States in 1906 and settled in New York. He studied at The Cooper Union and at the National Academy of Design.
Gellert was a passionate socialist and remained so throughout his life. He saw his art and his political views as inseparable, using his talents in support of radical causes in the pages of magazines including The Masses, its successor, The Liberator, as well as The Workers Monthly and The New Masses. He later worked as a staff artist for The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Gellert’s political activism remained an essential element of his life; his talent, combined with his fiercely held views, produced a body of work that placed him in the front rank of American social-realist artists of the twentieth century. He died at Freehold Township, New Jersey.
Louis Wolheim as Captain Flagg
Original pen, brush, and ink illustration on board, ca. 1925. Overall size 7" x 8¾" Signed in pencil by the artist. Toned at the perimeter of the print by an earlier mount, but otherwise clean and sound.
$1,200
Louis Wolheim (1880 - 1931) was born in New York City. Fluent in several languages, he received his AB in engineering from Cornell University and taught mathematics there in the years prior to World War I. His distinctive nose was the unfortunate result of a football injury and a subsequent brawl on the same day at Cornell. Upon the hearty encouragement of no less than John and Lionel Barrymore, Wolheim became a highly respected film and stage actor. He played the lead in the first production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" (1922) to great acclaim. In 1924, he starred as Captain Flagg opposite William (Hopalong Cassidy) Boyd in the long Broadway run of "What Price Glory?" the first commercial success of Maxwell Anderson and his co-author Laurence Stallings (it ran for over one year, from September 3, 1924 to September 12, 1925, logging 435 performances).