William Gropper (1897–1977), U.S. cartoonist and painter. New York-born Gropper supported himself by drawing cartoons for the New York Tribune, Smart Set, Bookman, Dial, Vanity Fair, New York Post, New Republic, and The Nation while he studied painting. He was also a contributor to such left-wing publications as New Masses and the Yiddish Morning Freiheit. During the Depression, he painted murals for public buildings for the Works Project Administration. Gropper, for years a leading painter in the American social realism movement - which was preoccupied with commenting upon political, social, and economic problems - used his art as a weapon in the fight for the betterment of the human condition. Groper's visit in 1948 to the ruins of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto made a deep impression on him, and he began to paint Jewish subjects. In his work after 1948, the Jew of Eastern Europe is presented as the epitome of all suffering mankind. Gropper also designed stained-glass windows for a temple in River Forest, Illinois.