A champion of socially committed art, Louis Ribak was involved in supporting workers' causes, such as the poor labor conditions of coal miners. As in many of his paintings, Ribak depicted his subjects subsumed by the barren industrial landscape. In the early 1920s, following the example of his teacher, the Ashcan School artist John Sloan, Ribak began to paint urban scenes of ordinary people at work and at leisure. During the Depression, Ribak's work was increasingly concerned with social issues and he became a founding member of the Communist-affiliated John Reed Club and contributed regularly to the radical publication New Masses.