Like many of his contemporaries, sculptor and teacher Robert Cronbach believed that art had a social mission. Accordingly, and reflecting his experience as an assistant to the prominent sculptor Paul Manship in 1930, Cronbach’s work tended to focus on public commissions. He was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Arts Project, developed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to generate jobs through public works projects.
Though Cronbach explored both figurative and abstract idioms, much of his sculpture concentrated on the life of the working class, as seen in the plaster Industry. His simple, crude figures are not portraits, but instead represent Depression-era laborers, specifically construction and garment workers. The harsh, angular forms allude to the severe social and economic conditions of the period.
Born in Missouri, Cronbach studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, later becoming an instructor at Adelphi University in Garden City.