Hugo Gellert's 'Comrade Gulliver' Satirizes Depression-Era America
Hugo Gellert's 1935 book 'Comrade Gulliver' reimagines Jonathan Swift's classic as a Communist satire of New Deal America. Gellert, an American Communist artist and cartoonist (1892–1985), casts himself as Lemuel Gulliver's Moscow-born great-great-great-grandson. The lithographs and text critique inequality, oligarchy, racism, and the one percent during the Great Depression. Gellert skewers empty skyscrapers, starvation, homeless children, Southern sharecropping, lynching, police brutality, and anti-Communist demagoguery. He even mocks Salvador Dalí's surrealism. The book ends with a note of hope: a woman promises to join him in the Soviet Union. PRINT Magazine's Steven Heller presents a selection of images with excerpts.
Key facts
- Hugo Gellert published 'Comrade Gulliver' in 1935.
- Gellert was an American Communist artist/cartoonist/illustrator (1892–1985).
- The book reimagines Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' from a Communist perspective.
- Gellert portrays himself as Lemuel Gulliver's Moscow-born great-great-great-grandson.
- The lithographs critique inequality, oligarchy, and racism in Depression-era America.
- Gellert satirizes Salvador Dalí's surrealist art.
- The book references Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and a $2.5 billion war appropriation.
- The article appears on PRINT Magazine's Daily Heller column.
- Steven Heller wrote the article and selected the images.
- The book is described as rare but not impossible to find.
Entities
Artists
- Hugo Gellert
- Jonathan Swift
- Salvador Dalí
- Steven Heller
Institutions
- PRINT Magazine
Locations
- United States
- America
- Moscow
- Russia
- Soviet Union
- New York
- Georgia
- Southern United States