Ralph Fasanella

Organizing Committee

Oil on Canvas, 1980

Organizing Committee depicts the interior of the empty store rented by the United Electrical (UE), Radio, and Machine Workers of America for its 1942 organizing drive at the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn. Fasanella was one of the main organizers for UE. The image of an organizing committee, painted many times by Fasanella, pays tribute to the quiet, everyday heroes of the labor movement-the field organizers and the shop workers who built strong unions one member at a time. Painting the scene became a ritual that reawakened Fasanella from his periodic creative slumps and boosted his morale when it was flagging.