Labor Day or Workers’ Day is celebrated on May 1st every year in many countries around the world to commemorate the commitment of the trade union movement and the achievements of workers in the economic and social fields. Many artists denounced the exploitation and conditions in which workers lived in different eras through their works. Let’s see together the most famous works that celebrate May 1st, which have also become a symbol of vindication. May Day, works of art that celebrate workers The fourth estate
And a famous painting made by the painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo in 1901, initially entitled The path of the workers. The work, which has become a manifesto of the workers’ struggle, is placed in the watershed between realism and symbolism. The fourth state represents the conclusion of a path of the author through numerous paintings all concerning the same theme, that is the workers’ strike. The first painting and the Ambassadors of hunger, then he painted the Fiumana and finally the preparatory sketch of 1898 The journey of the workers.
Pellizza thought of selling the picture immediately, but in the society of his time this painting was not lucky and it was the municipality of Milan who bought it., only in 1920 for 50,000 lire, thanks also to contributions from banks, associations and individuals. Initially it was exhibited at the Castello Sforzesco and soon became a symbol of socialism – Precisely for this reason with the advent of fascism it was deposited in a warehouse. Only in 1954 was it exhibited again and the mayor Ferrari placed it in the council chamber of Palazzo Marino . Here it suffered damage due to smoke, which required a restoration. Subsequently it is shown in various cities of the world such as Washington and Rome, in the eighties it finds its fixed location in Milan first in the Gallery of Modern Art and finally in the Museo del Novecento .
This work is a symbol of 20th century society, as it represents the workers’ strike and symbolizes not only social protest but the affirmation of a new social class, the proletariat, which becomes aware of its rights towards industrial society. . The work also demonstrates the painter’s commitment in the social sphere. In fact, he thought that the artist had the task of educating the population through his works. For eighty cents
After the first Triennale, in 1893 Morbelli painted Per 80 centesimi !, a picture of explicit denunciation of the work of the mondine. The painting depicts the mondine dipped in water up to the ankles, bent in the hard work of transplanting rice. The figures in the foreground are seen from behind in the repetitive act of planting the young plants. Hard work paid off with 80 cents. Water understood as a source of life and death. In 1897 the painter won the gold medals in Dresden with this painting. The Potato Eaters
It is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, made in April 1885. It is kept in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It is the most important painting of Van Gogh’s Dutch period, before his move to Paris. Van Gogh’s personality begins to emerge with the ‘underground works’ of the Dutch period. This painting shows, inside a poor room, some peasants who eat their evening meal from a single plate of potatoes.
Van Gogh is very attached to this subject as he feels like ‘one of them’. Even peasants like him suffer and he finds it unfair that despite all their efforts and sacrifices they have to live so poorly. The work underlines the continuous physical fatigue of those who have spent their lives working in the fields day after day. The bricklayer
Painting by Giovanni Sottocornola dated 1981. The work was presented by Sottocornola at the First Triennial Exhibition of Brera in the same year, as Giovanna Ginex points out, the struggles carried out by the working class to which bricklayers, unskilled workers and painters belong take on a prominence prominent social network in Milan in the late nineteenth century.
However, the image of the worker proposed by Sottocornola stands out for the sobriety of the paginated scene, devoid of the emphasis and peremptory character that pervades many compositions belonging to the same vein, such as The orator of the strike by Emilio Longoni, which appeared at the same Triennale Braidense. from 1891 in the same room as Muratore. The character, captured in an elegant pose that derives from that of official portraiture, and rendered through a solid and full-bodied draft, still far from the experimentation in the Divisionist area implemented by Sottocornola in other works inspired by social themes, such as Alba of the worker, dated to 1897, kept at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan . Third class wagon
It is a painting by the French painter Honore Daumier, currently exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa . In the style of Honore Daumier, who made his art an instrument of political struggle, this 1862 painting denounces the social conditions of the poorer classes (in line with the aims of realism, the artistic-cultural movement to which it belongs). The representation of a humble social condition and little taken into consideration by the state and created by the artist in the Renaissance style.
In addition to the workers, whose fatigue is ideally intercepted, the bourgeois show themselves, in sharp contrast with the other figures, with their arrogance and malevolence, thus underlining the clear gap between the weak (tired women and children) and the powerful (rich entrepreneurs ), a metaphorical and real concept that emerges from the painting. The drawing does not sketch the outlines, it accentuates the inelegant forms, in a different way from the refined and finished style taught in the academies, and intended for heroic subjects; the signature of his name on the wooden box represents the humility and a particular interest on the part of the painter for that social class. Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp
Made by Rembrandt in 1632. Today the work is kept at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Dr. Tulp is portrayed as he exposes to bystanders the functioning of the tendons in his left arm. It should be emphasized that the doctor’s gesture is also very similar to that of a painter when he holds the brush between his fingers; the painting, therefore, wants to underline the technical and demanding similarities between medicine and painting, and therefore wants to be a contemporary praise for both. Curiosity: the image of this painting (the upper half, probably in order not to make the corpse visible), was used to create the logo of the ECM : Continuing Medical Education, professional and scientific updating program of the Ministry of Health . Saint Jerome in the study
Painting by Antonello da Messina datable to about 1474-1475 and kept in the National Gallery in London. A large arched window in the Catalan style opens onto the study of Saint Jerome, the father of the Church who translated the Bible, intent on reading like a learned humanist. Despite its small size, the painting takes on a monumental effect thanks to the rhythm of Catalan architecture, which plays with solids and voids, and the light that strikes the subject and infiltrates the windows in the background, giving a glimpse of a meticulously cared for landscape. The central perspective makes the gaze converge directly on the figure of the Saint, and then gradually move away following the details of the study. A synthesis of perspective and light, the San Girolamo in the studio, and probably the work that Antonello brings as a “painting essay” for his stay in Venice (1475-1476), to be shown as a testimony to future clients.Leisure and work
Among the artists who turn their attention to social content early on, the name of Michele Cammarano stands out. He had grown up in a cultural environment linked to theater and melodrama. In 1863, at the second exhibition of the Promotional Society of Naples, the artist presented Ozio e lavoro. It is a work in which the analysis of the southern countryside is linked, perhaps with a certain ingenuity, to the proposal for reflection on the effects of a dissipated life. The layout, still built according to the schemes of southern landscape painting, contrasts the chromatically happy group of reapers with the figure of the lazzarone who casts a clear shadow on the sunny road.
