social realistn.adj.

1909 Warren (Pa.) Evening Mirror 9 July 1/3 Prof. Axson at 2.30 o'clock in the afternoon discussed Thackeray, the Social Realist.

1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 6 Nov. p. xxix/4 Even Ben Shahn, the outstanding social realist of twenty years ago, has come to prefer the expression of emotion through symbolism of his own devising from which political satire is absent.

1985 R. Curtis & B. Elton Blackadder II in R. Curtis et al. Blackadder: Whole Damn Dynasty (1998) 141/2 Mistress Ploppy's a bit of a social realist, sir.

2002 J. Meckier Dickens's Great Expectations iv. 120 Self-Help posed a unique challenge to Dickens's idea of himself as the era's premier social realist.

1949 College Art Jrnl. 9 178 ‘One Third of a Nation’, a social realist painting by Louis Guglielmi.

1956 New Yorker 14 Jan. 71/1 Perhaps the only really native Italian schools..are the one called Spazialismo..and a social-realist one.

1976 Listener 19 Aug. 218/3 Twenty years ago, the most modern artists in England were called the ‘kitchen-sink school’... John Berger wrote social realist reviews of their exhibitions.

2001 N.Y. Mag. 11 June 54/1 Ken Loach, the glumly social-realist British director, has shifted his attentions to Los Angeles in Bread and Roses, about the struggle of janitors to unionize.

1949 A. Nicoll World Drama xii. iv. 835 Less likely to pass beyond the bounds of their own country are the numerous plays..in which the Swedish Rudolf Värnlund has found expression for social-realistic studies.

1960 Guardian 18 Oct. 5/5 The group has..a distinct social realistic bias.

2002 Santa Fe New Mexican (Nexis) 23 Aug. 40 Along traditional socialist lines, Zadorine learned to produce social realistic art, i.e. representational art with social themes, for the people and by the people.