In 1929, the political cartoonist and painter William Gropper became one of the founding members of the John Reed Club of Artists and Writers. This Communist-affiliated group, which included other Social Realists like Raphael Soyer and Louis Lozowick, believed in creating art with explicit social and political content that would inform workers and encourage the class struggle.
These artists also participated in both non-sectarian and secular-Jewish antifascist groups in the 1930s, such as the leftist Yiddisher Kultur Farband. YKUF was founded in 1937 to demonstrate Jewish cultural achievement in the face of the imminent threat of the extinction of Jewish life in Europe.