The Student 

Abraham Joel Tobias created this drawing titled ‘The Student’ with graphite on paper. The image is a powerful meditation on the pursuit of knowledge, but also on the struggles that come with it. Tobias was active in New York during the 1930s and 40s, and his work reflects the social realism of the time. This was a period when many artists sought to depict the lives of ordinary people and the challenges they faced. Here, the figure hunches over a book, head in hands, seemingly overwhelmed by the task at hand. What I find interesting, is how the work speaks to the institutional history of art. Social Realism was a progressive artistic and political movement that sought to make art accessible to a wider audience. This artwork is a product of its time and can tell us a lot about the social conditions that shape artistic production. To further understand this artwork, one might research the artist's life, the history of social realism, and the social and political context in which the work was made.