Born in 1901 in New York City, Philip Evergood, originally named Howard Blashki, is known for his socially-minded depictions of gritty urban life. Evergood’s father, Miles Blashki, who changed his last name to Evergood after his son was born, worked as a landscape painter, immersing his son in the world of art. Philip Evergood attended two English boarding schools, Eton and Cambridge University. In 1921, he left Cambridge to study art at the Slade School in London. In 1923, Evergood traveled to New York City to join the Art Students League of New York. He returned to Europe a year later and worked various jobs in Paris, while studying at the Academie Julian. When Evergood settled down in New York City, in 1926, his career failed to take off due to illness and financial instability. However, collector Joseph H. Hirshhorn purchased several of Evergood’s paintings, giving Evergood the financial stability to paint and teach.

Evergood developed a distinct social-realist style. His depicted figures in grotesque forms and colored his compositions brightly. Evergood incorporated themes of gender and racial inequality, worker’s rights and poverty into most of his paintings. He primarily concerned himself with conveying emotion over depicting beauty in his artwork. An American Tragedy (1937, Private Collection) is a prime example of Evergood’s work. The painting possesses heavy lines, strident colors, and a crude figurative style to match the gritty subject matter. The scene takes place in South Chicago’s Republic Steel Plant which, at the time, began unionizing. Workers are armed with sticks and show aggressive solidarity within its integrated workforce of men and women. African-Americans, Caucasians, and Latinos stand against the attacking police who killed 10 workers that day and injured 100 others. Evergood suffered his own beating at the hands of the police when he participated in a sit-down strike organized by the Artists’ Union. Evergood stated, “I don’t think anybody who hasn’t been brutally beaten up by the police badly, as I have, could have painted An American Tragedy.” Other provocative works include Sunnyside of the Street (1950, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) and The Indestructibles (1946, Art Institute of Chicago).

During the Great Depression, Evergood worked with the Works Progress Administration, painting murals that depicted themes of poverty on New York City’s streets. He famously created The Story of Richmond Hill (1936–37, Public Library Branch, Queens, New York) and Cotton from Field to Mill (1938, Treasury Section of Fine Arts, Jackson, Georgia).

Evergood taught art until 1943 and moved to Southbury, Connecticut, in 1952. He remained a full member of the Art Students League of New York and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Although Evergood experimented with etching and lithography in the 1920s, he did not devote himself on a large scale to printmaking until after 1945. During the 1950s, Evergood departed from his established social-realist style and concentrated on biblical and mythological symbolism, which is seen in The New Lazarus (1954, Whitney Museum of American Art).

In 1973, Evergood tragically died in a house fire in Bridgewater, Connecticut. In 1960, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York celebrated Evergood’s work in a retrospective exhibition. Although his later works revolved around allegorical and religious themes, his works largely reflected and exposed the political turmoil of his day.