The self-taught artist Ralph Fasanella (1914-97), born in the Bronx to Italian immigrants, believed that painting could be a form of labor advocacy. He worked as an ice delivery man, a truck driver, a gas station owner and a union organizer, all the while developing his colorful and detailed scenes of working-class life (as in "Family Supper," which shows his mother, a garment worker, taking her second shift at a crowded dinner table).

He also made historical paintings, like the mid-1970s series of canvases documenting the 1912 "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, Mass.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com