Phil Bard

Bard was employed as a cartoonist at Krazy Kat Studio before joining the staff of New Masses magazine in 1930.^[1] Bard worked for the Communist Party as an organizer in the Ohio National Guard's summer camp, attempting to spread anti-military leaflets.^[2] Bard was one of five members on the National Secretariat of the John Reed Club in 1934.^[3] Under the influence of the John Reed Club and members like Hugo Gellert, Bard began to work with murals in addition to his drawings.^[4] While representing the Club, he participated in the protests against the removal of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads from Rockefeller Center, though he was critical of Rivera's politics.^[5] Bard was also a founding member of the Artists' Union in 1934.^[6] In 1936 he was active in the American League Against War and Fascism, contributing a page to an illustrated calendar that featured 12 drawings by left-wing artists.^[7]

During the Spanish Civil War, Bard joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, serving as the Lincoln Battalion's political commissar,^[8] but left the military because of ill health.^[9] He continued to aid the loyalists in Spain by serving as the executive secretary of the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.^[10] Morris Cohen wrote that a speech by Bard at a Bronx County Communist Party meeting inspired him to join the International Brigades in 1937.^[11]

Using his background in art, he worked as the advertising manager for the Daily Worker, where he attracted controversy in 1950 for refusing to publish advertisements for a film criticizing the trial of Cardinal Midszenty.^[12] Bard became paralyzed on his right side after an illness but he trained himself to draw with his left hand.^[13] Bard had his first solo exhibition of drawings in 1955 at ACA Galleries^[14] At this time, his work still reflected his left-wing sympathies, depicting human figures "shrunken in body and spirit" in "a world on the point of crumbling".^[15]

Beyond his political activities and art, Bard continued to support himself as a comic artist, drawing art for the comic book Minute-Man.^[16] He was the author of one play, an allegorical story of a blind veteran, called Ninth Month Midnight.^[17] It was performed in 1949 by the Abbe Practical Workshop.^[18] Bard died on March 12, 1966, at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn.^[19]