Maurice Becker

Maurice Becker (1889–1975) was a radical political artist best known for his work in the 1910s and 1920s for such publications as The Masses and The Liberator.

Maurice Becker was born in Nizhni-Novgorod, Russia, the son of ethnic Jewish parents. The family emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1892, moving to the Jewish community of the Lower East Side of New York City. His older sister was Helen Tamiris a modern dance pioneer and his brother Sam Becker was a sculptor.

The young Maurice took night classes in bookkeeping and art while working days as a sign painter. He worked as an artist for the New York Tribune from 1914 to 1915, and for the Scripps newspapers from 1915 to 1918. He also contribute artwork on a freelance basis to a broad range of contemporary publications, including Harper's Weekly, Metropolitan magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post.

Maurice Becker is best remembered as an illustrator for radical magazines, most famously for the New York political and artistic magazine The Masses, to which he began to contribute in 1912.

He married Dorothy Baldwin, an active Socialist, in 1918. That same year he became a conscientious objector to American participation in World War I. He fled to Mexico to avoid the draft. He was arrested upon his return to the United States in 1919 and was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor, of which he served 4 months at Fort Leavenworth prior to commutation of his sentence.

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