Sale 2495 - Illustration Art, December 6, 2018

111 c ROCKWELL KENT. “To All Fascists.” Broadside for The League of American Writers, written by Donald Ogden Stewart with headpiece illustration by Kent, circa 1937. India ink on stiff paper. Calligraphed, but not in Kent’s hand. 605x480 mm; 23 3 / 4 x18 3 / 4 inches. Signed three times by Kent (twice in image and once among list at bottom), along with signatures of numerous members. Professionally cleaned and restored. [3,000/4,000] Kent was an ardent political activist and an early member of the League of American Writers, the organization formed by figures in the arts and letters under the Communist Party USA and established by the First American Writers Congress in 1935. He was also a longtime friend and neighbor of Stewart when the two lived in the Adirondacks, before Stewart left for Hollywood to continue his successful screenwriting career. This large-scale, anti-fascist broadside voiced the League’s cry against brutality during the Spanish Civil War. In addition to Kent and Stewart, other notable signers include Elmer Adler, Marc Blitzstein, Lawrence Gelb, Prince Hubertus and Princess Helga Maria Loewenstein, Henry Seidel Canby, and author and screenwriter Lester Cohen. No equivalent or printed version could be located among the Rockwell Kent Papers (Archives of American Art), the archives of The League at Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books division of The New York Public Library, or the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.