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Copyright
All Rights Reserved ()

The Return Home

Accession Number
1996/2.27

Title
The Return Home

Artist(s)
Abram Tromka

Object Creation Date
1939

Medium & Support
oil on canvas

Dimensions
24 3/8 x 29 3/8 in. (61.9 x 74.6 cm);32 13/16 x 37 13/16 x 2 1/16 in. (83.19 x 95.89 x 5.1 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Arnold S. Monto

Label copy
Tromka was one of the over 3,600 artists who survived the bleak years of the Great Depression with assistance from the New Deal’s Federal Art Project (1935–43), an agency which matched hard-hit artists with public works assignments throughout the nation. The themes expressed by most of these artists tended toward social realism, a naturalistic style concerned with subject matter of social import, such as urban life, industry, or agricultural work.
Though Tromka worked as a Federal Art Project artist during the Depression, he did not have to participate out of economic necessity; as an established artist, he was invited in order to lend prestige to the endeavor. It was during this period that he created "The Return Home," which shows a man with a sack on his back returning to his village in a half-rural, half-industrial landscape, possibly representing the coal fields of Pennsylvania. This painting complements the Museum’s Niles Spencer painting of an industrial landscape ("In the Town," 1930), and relates well to the Museum’s large holdings of prints by artists who worked for the Federal Art Project and Works Progress Administration, a program to employ the jobless in public projects.
(A. Dixon, 20th Century Gallery installation, June 1999)

Primary Object Classification
Painting

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
modern and contemporary art

3 Related Resources

Politics, and Social Reform in the US, 1901-1950
(Part of 6 Learning Collections)
Home
(Part of 6 Learning Collections)
Social realism, mid-19th century to mid-20th century
(Part of 8 Learning Collections)

& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved