The Artists International Association
Tate Britain, London

UNLIKE most working-class children, when Cliff Rowe left school in 1918 aged 14 he went to the local art school rather than going straight to work. Aged 19 he was earning a living as a commercial artist, but painting in his own time. He accepted the profession’s competitive, individualist values, until someone loaned him the Communist Manifesto. Convinced of its logic he became one of Britain’s most principled, lifelong communist artists. 

In 1930 he travelled to the young USSR, then a beacon of hope to his generation ravaged by the Hungry Twenties, and where there was plentiful illustration work. Inspired by Soviet cultural policies and the USA’s John Reed Clubs, Rowe initiated the founding of the Artist International (AI) in 1933.