This catalog features works by the the legendary self-taught New York painter Ralph Fasanella, alongside an essay by Erika Doss, an art historian and professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Fasanella believed that a nation founded on aspirations of liberty, freedom, and collective social progress should, in fact, live up to those ambitions; similarly, he didn’t sugarcoat how the nation had failed, or fallen behind. Frequently combining scenes of what was with what could be, often referencing the reformist initiatives of twentieth-century labor unions and other progressive political movements, Fasanella pictured an imagined America, a more perfect union.

Spanning his entire career, the works collected in this catalog reveal many of the subjects and scenes that most captivated Fasanella: urban neighborhoods, labor activism (the Great Strike of 1912, Lawrence, MA), and national tragedies (the assassination of JFK) and traumas (the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). Today, as demonstrated by the surge of protest by groups like Occupy, and growing recognition of the abiding facts of American economic disparity, Ralph Fasanella’s paintings are more revelatory, and relevant, than ever.