Social realist artists identify with the downtrodden sectors of society, workers, farmers, laborers, and use their work to draw attention to the living conditions of these classes. The movement finds its roots in 19th century France and a movement known as Realism. Realist painters like Gustave Courbet and Jean-Francois Millet painted everyday working-class French citizens, presenting a sympathetic view of a segment of society most would prefer to remain hidden. While French Realists often painted rural life, Social Realism encompasses paintings of both urban and rural labor. Social Realists sought to deliberately distance themselves from the movements of the European avant-garde.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the United States federal government formed two organizations, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA), which employed artists. Artists working for the WPA and the FSA—including Jacob Lawrence, Ben Shahn, and Grant Wood—traveled the country and painted the diverse landscape they encountered. Photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White brought public attention to rural poverty with their widely disseminated photographs, such as Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother (1936). The Mexican Muralists who worked beginning in the 1920s, including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, also created work that falls under this umbrella in an effort to unite the country under the new revolutionary government. Rivera later created murals in the United States that painted American industry in a positive light.