Art & Design Now 

El Lissitzky, Sportsmen (Sportier) 1923 Lithograph on paper. El Lissitzky was an artist and designer who was active in communist Russia in the 1920’s, when avant-garde artists sought to produce art with a socially useful purpose. He saw his abstract Supremacist works as models for a utopian world. Image courtesy of Tate.

Grupa Zvono (Bell Group), Art and Soccer, 1986 The Zvono Group, active in the 1980’s in Yugoslavia, staged art actions in public places in Sarajevo, taking their paintings and performances to the public on the street and at sporting events. Like many left-wing artists they sought to engage directly with ordinary people, rather than produce art for a wealthy elite. Photograph: © ZVONO

Guerrilla Girls, 1985–90. Poster. Guerilla Girls is a group of women artists and feminists who campaign against sexism and racism in the art world. The Guerrilla Girls formed in New York in 1985 in response to the MOMA exhibition "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture", where there were only 13 women artists compared to 166 men represented in the show. Image © www.guerrillagirls.com

Atelier Populaire, Debut d'une Lutte Prolongee, (Start of a Prolonged Struggle), Poster. 1968. The Atelier Populaire was a group of left-wing artist/activists who produced posters during the popular uprising in France in May 1968. This poster shows a factory occupied by the workers. At its height, the Mai’ 68 events saw 11 million workers on strike, President De Gaulle fleeing the country and the National Assembly dissolved. Eventually troops were sent in, workers went back to work, and order wa

Braco Dimitrijevic, Casual Passer-by I met at 1.43 PM, Venice, 1976. During the 1970’s the Jugoslav artist Dimitrijevic took photos of ordinary people in the street, which he blew up into massive portraits displayed on public buildings and billboards. He is celebrating the ordinary person as being as important as figures from history, and in so democratising art & challenging the value of celebrity. Photograph: Sam Drake/Courtesy of the Tate.

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Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project, 1970. Meireles is a leading conceptual artist famous for printing instructions on making a petrol-bomb onto Coke bottles, which he sent back for refilling and redistribution by the beverage company. He used the company’s own distribution system to send his “Yankee Go Home” message across Brazil. Photograph: Cildo Meireles.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793. One of the earliest pieces of left-wing art, painted during the French Revolution, this painting was intended to promote Marat as a revolutionary hero and martyr. Several copies were made which toured France spreading the message; an early example of propaganda art. Photograph: Courtesy of Musée des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Marianne Brandt, Desk Lamp, 1928. Brandt was a Bauhaus artist and designer, who designed numerous lamps and tea-sets for mass-production. The philosophy of the Bauhaus was socialist, in that it wanted to democratise art, and bring functional design to the masses. Photograph: Gunter Lepkowski/© DACS/Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin