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Snapshots of the ordinary
AS the son of an anarchist leader, with a sideline in politically conscious portraits of the working class, it would be easy to pigeon-hole Fermin Rocker.
Rocker might have rubbed shoulders with prominent politicians, dissidents and artists during the turbulent 1920s of the Weimar Republic, but the social commentary of his paintings and illustrations is ambiguous.
The British-born artist, who died in 2004 at the age of 96, is commonly regarded as a pioneer of American social realism, which emerged in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
An exhibition currently on at the Chambers Gallery places Rocker alongside Ben Shahn, and Moses and Raphael Soyer and thus further cements his place in the movement.
Above all, though, Rocker seems to be an observer of the every day. His paintings are honest, saturnine depictions of daily life. It is Rocker’s course through history, in post-war Germany, pre-war America and Thatcher’s Britain, which gives his work a political edge, but his subjects are timeless.
SIMON WROE
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