Cliff Rowe was a socialist whose work represented his concern for working life and industry. He lived in the Soviet Union for 18 months in the 1930s, carrying out design commissions for the Red Army. Back in England he helped to found the Artists' International Association in 1933. This group saw art as a weapon in the class struggle and aimed to promote peace and oppose fascism. In his work ‘Woman with a shopping bad’ an ordinary woman carrying her shopping is painted in the heroic style of Soviet socialist art. Rowe died in 1989.
