William Gropper

William Gropper was an American cartoonist, painter, and muralist whose sharp political satire defined much of his career. Born William Victor Gropper on December 3, 1897, in New York City, he grew up in poverty and began drawing early, studying at the Ferrer School and later the National Academy of Design. His path into comics and illustration was fueled by a deep commitment to social justice; he contributed cartoons and covers to radical left-wing publications including *The Revolutionary Age*, *The Liberator*, *The New Masses*, *The Worker*, and *Morgen Freiheit*. In our catalog, he is credited across 25 issues as artist, colorist, inker, letterer, and writer, with his most frequent credits on *New Masses* and the comic strip *Alay-Oop*. Gropper’s style was bold, expressionistic, and unsparing, often targeting corporate greed and political corruption. He collaborated with editors and writers within the progressive press, though his most lasting co-creation is the syndicated strip *Alay-Oop*, which ran from 1930 to 1932. Later in life, he turned increasingly to painting and lithography, earning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937. He died on January 3, 1977, in Manhasset, New York. His legacy endures as a fierce visual voice for the American left, and his work is held in major museum collections.