Leaflets (Double V)

Morris Topchevsky

1945

Painting of men and women calling out and waving leaflets with the letter "V" on them.

Morris Topchevsky painted Leaflets when he was an art instructor at the Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, where the majority of students were Black. Here we see African Americans holding posters with a V imprinted on them, in the spirit of the Double V campaign, whose rallying cry was “Democracy at Home, Victory Abroad,” mounted by the African American newspaper Philadelphia Courier in 1942. Like almost all his best-known work, it reflects his dedication to the cause of organized labor.

Credits

Used by permission of the Bernard Friedman Chicago Modern Collection.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

Morris Topchevsky

1899–1947

Artist and activist Morris Topchevsky immigrated to Chicago from Bialystok in 1911.In his early twenties, Topchevsky studied art at Hull-House, a settlement house for immigrants on Chicago’s Near West Side, and subsequently at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A trip to Mexico in 1924, during which he met and worked with the muralist Diego Rivera, further strengthened his commitment to employing art as a means of resisting and overcoming oppression. Topchevsky spent a number of years teaching at the Abraham Lincoln Centre on Chicago’s South Side, working with the local African American community.