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Phil Bard (February 14, 1912-March 17, 1966) was an American artist and Communist Party organizer.
Biography
editBard worked as a cartoonist at Krazy Kat Studios before joining the staff of New Masses magazine in 1930.[1] Bard worked for the Communist Party as an organizer in the Ohio National Guard's summer camp, attempting to spread anti-military leaflets.[2] He was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion during the Spanish Civil War, serving as the Brigade's political commander, but left the military because of ill health.[3] Bard was on of five members on the National Secretariat of the John Reed Club in 1934.[4] Under the influence of the John Reed Club and members like Hugo Gellert, Bard began to work with murals in addition to his drawings.[5] While representing the Club, he participated in the protests against the removal of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads from Rockefeller Center, though he was critical of Rivera's politics.[6] His illness left him paralyzed on his right side but he trained himself to draw with his left hand.[7] He continued to aid the loyalists in Spain by serving as the executive secretary of the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.[8] Bard was a founding member of the Artists' Union in 1934.[9]
Using his background in art, he worked as the advertising manager for the Daily Worker, where he attracted controversy in 1950 for refusing to publish advertisements for a film criticizing the trial of Cardinal Midzenty. [10]
Beyond his political activities and art, Bard continued to support himself as a comic artist, drawing art for the comic book Minute-Man.[11]He was the author of one play, an allegorical story of a blind veteran, called Ninth Month Midnight. [12] It was performed in 1949 by the Abbe Practical Workshop.[13] Bard had his first solo exhibition of drawings in 1955 at ACA Galleries[14] At this time, his work still reflected his left-wing sympathies, depicting human figures "shrunken in body and spirit" in "a world on the point of crumbling".[15]
References
edit- ^ Hemingway, Andrew (2002). Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956. Yale University Press. p. 50. ISBN 0300092202.
- ^ Eby, Cecil D. (2007). Comrades and commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War. The Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780271029108.
- ^ "Form Friends of Lincoln Boys to Aid U.S. Fighters". The Daily Worker. April 26, 1937. p. 4.
- ^ "John Reed Clubs". Partisan Review. 1 (2): 61. April–May 1934.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) - ^ Platt, Susan Noyes (1999). Art and politics in the 1930s : Modernism, Marxism, Americanism : a history of cultural activism during the Depression years. Midmarch Arts Press. p. 90. ISBN 1877675296.
- ^ "Broad United Front to Preserve Rivera Murals". The Militant. May 20, 1933. p. 1.
- ^ Soyer, Raphael (1977). Diary of an Artist. New Republic Books. p. 225. ISBN 0915220296.
- ^ Pitkin, Rex (August 24, 1937). "'They Kill Our Boys With Dum-Dum Bullets,' Says Bard, Home From Spain". The Daily Worker. p. 2.
- ^ O'Connor, Francis V., ed. (1972). The New Deal art projects; an anthology of memoirs. Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 116. ISBN 0874741130.
- ^ "Daily Worker Declines Midszenty Film Ads". The Motion Picture Herald. April 15, 1945.
- ^ The Steranko History of Comics. p. 48.
- ^ "Phil Bard's Interesting First Play 'Ninth Month Midnight'". The Daily Worker. February 21, 1949. p. 11.
- ^ Chapman, John, ed. (1949). The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1948-1949. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. p. 427.
- ^ "Reviews and previews". ARTnews. 54 (6): 49. October 1955.
- ^ Finkelstein, Sidney (November 1955). "New Drawings of Phil Bard". Jewish Currents. 10 (1): 30.