The Prize Winner

Painter and printmaker Russell Limbach worked as the Art Editor of The New Masses, a publication tied to the Communist Party, and subsequently organized the Graphics Division of the WPA Arts Project in New York. Many of his prints are witty reflections on middle-class American life. In The Prizewinner, some exhibition visitors, especially the taller of the two women, seem somewhat shocked that the painting of bosomy female nude won a prize and found a buyer. Who is the bald man facing outward? The artist? The buyer? Someone too shy to look?