Without a doubt, Irving Norman is one of the greatest American social surrealists of the 20th century. A Jewish Lithuanian émigré born in Vilnius (then under Russian control) Norman moved to the United States with his family in 1923. In 1938, Norman joined the Abraham Lincoln battalion of the International Brigade to fight Francisco Franco and the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Returning in 1940, Norman sought to confront and describe the atrocities he had seen during his time in Spain and turned to art as his outlet. Norman's surrealist work, inspired by his experiences, socialist stance, and the tenants of Mexican muralism, tells a tale of capitalistic greed, machine-like automatism, and the horrors of modern life.
